


come have your fortune told

by BlinkFl0yd



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Character Death, Corpses, Gen, Ghosts, actual familial murder, attempted familial murder, other various murders, reverb 2018, spookiness, this what i call "the casino shining au"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 02:52:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15133514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlinkFl0yd/pseuds/BlinkFl0yd
Summary: Kid’s proud of his legacy. Kid wants to do good, which is why he invites the Thompson sisters to work at Black Arrow, an old, luxurious casino tucked away in the mountains. But then winter sets in, a fortune-teller whispers, a future is foretold, and Kid comes to realize that good deeds in the present don’t erase misdoings of the past.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> REVERB WHOOP
> 
> Based on soundofez's kickass card set (link below, show it some love!)
> 
> https://soundofez.tumblr.com/post/175452595138/come-have-your-fortune-told-links-pending#notes

_ The first thing he hears is the soft  _ **_slap_ ** _ of cards against the surface of a wooden table. _

 

_ Then there’s the sound of laughter, lilted and bright. The  _ **_clink_ ** _ of two glasses together. _

 

_ Then music, soft, energetic  _ **_beats_ ** _ that feel as though they’re stringing through his ears and weaving around his mind. _

 

_ He’s sitting at a small, round table, adorned with a white tablecloth and a  _ **_flickering_ ** _ , golden candle at its center. _

 

_ There are people surrounding him, boxing him in at all sides. He can see their glittering masks, the soft lines of their dresses, the crisp edges of their tuxedos. Their sound feels overwhelming, a desperate, buzzing mess of voices, of music, blending together and  _ **_buzzing-_ **

 

_ He feels a tug at his sleeve, and when he turns he finds himself staring into a sad, doe-like pair of eyes.  _

 

_ The child in front of him quivers, refuses to meet his gaze. “The L-La-Lady wants to see you. Sir.” _

 

 _He stares down at him, confused. Lady? Was he seeing a lady? Why would he be seeing a lady? (Come to think of it, how exactly did he get here?) “What?”_ __  
_  
_ __Fingers smaller than his own tug at his sleeve again, and he finds himself pulled up, to his feet, until he towers over the small, slight child with their matted hair and sad, scared eyes.

 

_ “Just f-follow me,” the child murmurs. _

 

_ He does, pulled through what feel like never-ending streams of people. The scent of tobacco and whiskey is strong, wafts around him along with the loud, almost hysterical laughter. Small, scattered gleams of light blind him-  _ **_glares_ ** _ from the hanging beads of glass chandeliers, the shining gem on a woman’s necklace, the rim of a wine glass- _

 

_ Until he finds himself facing a curtain, red as the blood that streams through his veins. _

 

_ “Here w-we are,” comes the faint, almost dread-filled murmur of the child next to him as a shaking hand reaches forward and pulls the curtain back. _

 

_ He steps inside a dark room, lit only by a few flickering candles. At a dark, mahogany table, a woman lifts her head and greets him with a pleased smile that touches the corners of her eyes. She’s clad all in black- black dress, black gloves, a black, slight hairpiece that twists up in the air in coils. _

 

_ “Come.” She beckons him forward with a gloved hand. “Sit. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.” _

 

_ He obeys, because what else can he do?  _

 

_ On the surface of the table lies a fan of playing cards. The woman gathers them up and shuffles them, before setting them in a neat stack in front of her. _

 

_ “Now.” Her smile grows wider. “Shall we begin?” _

 

* * *

 

 

“Is my father busy?”

 

The receptionist barely looks up at him from where her eyes are fixed, a glowing computer screen that reflects on her glasses. Neither does she stop typing. “Nope. Go on in, he’s been waiting to see you.”

 

Kid lets out a short exhale, a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He’s just gotten back from the DMV (a stupidly unorganized place, as he had found), his shoes are soaked from the rain outside, and he’s tired. He can practically _ feel _ the amount of wrinkles that must be forming in his suit, like a phantom itch. He wants nothing more than to go home, change, iron his clothes back to perfection, and maybe find a book to read somewhere warm and comfortable.

 

He wants to, but he can’t. Not until he talks to his father, anyway. The receptionist’s  _ “he’s been waiting to see you” _ feels foreboding enough that the temptation to just go home and deal with everything in the morning spikes.

 

The crack of thunder outside and the torrent of rain pounding against the other side of large, floor-to-ceiling windows doesn’t help. He’s never been one to be paranoid about omens, but he can appreciate the possibility of the universe giving him a warning.

 

“Alright,” Hhe responds. “Thank you.”

 

She still doesn’t look up. “You’re welcome.”

 

He turns, strides over towards the large wooden doors that lead to his father’s office, and raps once with his knuckles.

 

“Come on in,” a faint, familiar voice says, and Kid obliges.

 

His father’s office is bright and airy, with floor-to-ceiling windows and light, comfortable furniture. The dreary weather outside doesn’t affect that overall atmosphere, it’s still well-lit, cheerful-looking. The wall behind the desk contains a collection of photographs- most of them are of his father standing in front of the various properties that he owns, but there are a few of him and Kid, standing side-by-side, taken during the very few vacations they had embarked on. His father calls it his “achievement wall,” openly and in front of clients and colleagues, much to Kid’s infinite embarrassment.

 

Shinigami himself sits at a large, glass desk shuffling a stack of papers, and when he smiles at Kid the golden eyes that match Kid’s own tilt up warmly.

 

“Hey there, Kiddo.” He sets the papers aside. “So? Did you get your permit?”

 

“I did.” Kid goes ahead and takes a seat in one of the leather armchairs across from the desk. His umbrella, he notices with a wince, is dripping on the hardwood floors, so he picks it up and lets it rest on his lap. His suit is a mess anyway: it’s better there than on the floor. 

 

“Woohoo!” Shinigami gives him two thumbs up. “Not that I expected you to fail, but still! Tell you what, we’ll order out tonight to celebrate. There’s this new sushi place that opened a couple blocks down, I think Spirit said it was pretty good. What do you think?”

 

“I’d like that.” 

 

“Great! I might be home a bit late, probably sometime after nine, but I think we can still make it work.”

 

“That’s fine.” At least his father is in a good mood. Now would be the best time to drop the question. “Have you thought at all about what we talked about yesterday?”

 

There’s a distinct pause. The golden eyes get much less cheerful, and darken into something that Kid can’t quite read.

 

“I’m not trying to push you,” Kid says quickly. “I just...you seemed upset last night. When I first told you about what happened.”

 

His father sighs. Steeples his fingers. “I know. It’s just-”

 

“Just what?” Kid doesn’t want to sound demanding. He really doesn’t. It doesn’t sound like his father’s upset with him after all, but there’s definitely something that he’s missing. “Did I cross a line? That’s not at all what I was trying to do, and if I did I’m really sorry-”

 

“By offering two teenage, dropout delinquents jobs under my name?” And there it is. “In all honesty, I would have appreciated it if you had asked me if I was comfortable with that first, and obviously you didn’t. And judging by their records-- which, by the way, I had Sid send me this morning-- I’m  _ very _ skeptical that they won’t try to steal anything. Not to mention that I don’t think their getting fired was particularly your fault, no matter how much of a scene you caused. From what I heard, those two have a nasty track record in retail. And not only  _ that _ , but you want them to work in one of our most valuable venues, in a position that requires a great deal of trust and responsibility. You can see why I’m not completely comfortable with this, right?”

 

Kid winces at the mention of the  _ incident _ , of when the two girls got fired _. _ It  _ was _ technically his fault that the two girls had gotten fired from their job, as he’d been the one to personally (and vocally) complain about them to their manager. Though it  _ definitely _ hadn’t been his intention to get them fired, especially when he had no idea they had been fired until he’d ran into them later that they were living alone on the streets. Hell, when he ran into them later, he had seen them in the middle of  _ getting mugged at gunpoint.  _

 

Still, he hadn’t planned on actually offering them a new job. Not really. It was more of a spur-of-the-moment thing, a suggestion that came out of his mouth that he was kind of forced to run with. After he’d called the police, they’d confronted him, with the older girl completely ripping into him about getting them fired. After he’d made the offer, she’d gone from looking surprised to giving him a tight smirk.

 

_ (“Alright, we’ll take you up on that. Give us your number.”) _

 

It had felt like a dare, and Kid had gone ahead and taken it. 

 

He doesn’t really regret it though.  He may not like pulling in a favor from his father, but he definitely feels bad about getting them fired when they were already homeless."

 

(And admittedly, a part of it stems a bit from the kind of _“you’re just a dumbass spoiled brat, you don’t give a shit about the common folk”_ accusation they had slapped him with, one that caused a distinct stab of hurt that he did his best to conceal.)

 

No matter his reasons, though, he’s here now, and he never backs out on his commitments. Or breaks his promises.

 

“That’s why I came up with a solution. I think.” Kid crosses his legs and leans back in his chair. He feels a bit better, seeing that his father isn’t  _ too _ upset with him, but he still has to take a second to steel himself a bit. He’s still a bit disappointed in himself for not handling the entire situation with Elizabeth and Patricia Thompson as well as he could have, and he really wants to smooth things out. He’s supposed to inherit his father’s responsibilities one day, and how is he supposed to do that if he flounders into situations he can’t fix? “If you’re open for that, of course.”

 

His father gives him a smile. “Definitely. What are you thinking?” 

 

“Well, whenever we do renovations on one of our venues, we always send somebody to supervise, right?”

 

Shinigami nods. 

 

“Well, maybe I could take charge this time.”

 

His father raises his eyebrows. “What?”

 

“Supervise the renovations. At Black Arrow.” 

 

Smack in the middle of the achievement wall, there’s a photograph of a low, wide building in a snowy landscape. A much younger Shinigami stands proud in front, hands in his pockets and a pleased expression on his face. Kid can see it now, over his father’s shoulder, smack in the center of the wall like a crown jewel in the array of frames. It was taken on the day that he came into possession of the Black Arrow Casino, a large, old gambling resort set deep into the mountains. Kid’s never actually been there himself, despite the status it holds in his father’s eyes, but he intends to change that.

 

“And in turn,” he goes on, “supervise Elizabeth and Patricia too. If you agree to let them work there, anyway. You’ve been talking about giving me more responsibilities over our venues anyways.” Kid absentmindedly twists one of his rings around his finger. “I thought maybe this would be a good start. Between those two interests, I thought my supervising the renovations would be a decent compromise.”

 

Silence. His father’s brows are furrowed, expression unreadable. It’s hard to miss how tense he looks, like a coil wound too tight.

 

“You don’t like that,” Kid realizes aloud, heart sinking.

 

“No no, it’s fine.” That’s a lie. “It’s just...well, the renovations start soon, it’s just not enough time…” Shinigami trails off. 

 

Kid gets the distinct sense that there’s more to it then that. “Do you not want the Thompsons at Black Arrow?”

 

“No no, it’s not that-”

 

“Then what’s the issue? You’ve been talking about taking me there for years, why wouldn’t you want me to go there now?”

 

Shinigami lets out a sigh. “It’s...probably just me being paranoid. I’ll admit, you working with such a wide variety in a complete group of strangers in such an isolated place like Arrow nags quite a bit at the overprotective father in me, but I know you can handle it. Working so close to construction equipment nags at me too, even though I know you’re careful. And- well...”

 

Kid waits, watches as the pause ticks by and his father visibly tries to relax.

 

“I’ve told you about the history of Black Arrow, right?” Shinigami finally says.

 

“Bits and pieces. I’ve read about it online, though.” A thought occurs to him. “I know that there are rumors flying around that it’s haunted. Is that what this is about?”

 

“...Sort of.” His father leans back in his chair. “Have I ever told you the story of the first owner? Medusa Gorgon?” 

 

Kid shook his head. “I know she died there, but-”

 

“She was murdered there. By her own child.”

 

For a second, there’s nothing but the sound of rain against the windows.

“...Oh.” Is all Kid can say.

 

“They killed the rest of their family that was there too,” His father goes on. “Two aunts, I know. And supposedly a few other people. And then they turned the knife onto themselves.”

 

_ Holy shit. _ Kid has  _ never _ heard this story before. “You’re telling me people have been  _ murdered _ there?”

 

His father shrugs helplessly. “Yeah, we usually tend to keep that detail out of our advertising. It’s one thing for people to tell ghost stories, but it’s another thing for those ghost stories to have any merit other than the fact that the place in question is old.” There’s a pause. “Or that those ghost stories turn out to have way more merit than anyone was expecting.”

 

That’s  _ definitely _ something he hadn’t heard about until now. “Wait- what?”

 

His father shrugs. “When I first bought Black Arrow, we ended up getting so many reports I ended up calling a priest. It was a bit of an ordeal, but the reports did stop afterwards. The more credible ones, anyway. Until about ten years later, when we had to do the whole thing all over again.”

 

Kid stares at him in disbelief. Out of all the concerns he thought his father would bring up, this was  _ not _ it. “Seriously?”

 

“I know, I know, it’s hard to believe.”

 

“Do you believe it? These ghost stories?” He can’t quite keep the incredulity out of his voice. “Dad, are you seriously telling me that Black Arrow is _ haunted _ ?”   
  


His father’s fingers drum against the surface of the desk. He’s nervous, Kid realizes. “I don’t know how to explain it, really. I don’t particularly enjoy staying there, in all honesty-”

 

“You don’t? But-”

 

“Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly proud of it. It’s a beautiful place, and plenty of people truly love it there. It just also happens to be one with a dark history. A lot of…shady stuff’s happened there in the past, Kiddo. Black Arrow used to be a centerpiece for organized crime, all the way back into the Prohibition Era when gambling was illegal. It doesn’t have nice roots, to say the least.” His father’s fingers tap nervously against the table. “I’ve always been worried those roots might come back up.”

 

There’s something unsaid there. There’s something that Shinigami isn’t saying, and it irritates Kid. He dislikes not knowing, he dislikes the possibility of getting bit in the ass because of information that he should have known earlier, which there is always a possibility of if one doesn’t have the whole story. He’s missing something here, but he can’t figure out what it is.

 

But he bites his tongue. Because he trusts his father. He has never had any reason not to. If his father’s worried about a dead woman and her family, about the ghost stories coming to life, Kid will listen to him. Even if he’s a bit- no,  _ incredibly _ skeptical.

 

Nevertheless, he promised the Thompsons a favor. He got two homeless girls fired from their jobs at once, forcing them out of work, and he won’t feel right unless he does  _ something _ to help them.

 

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Kid says, carefully, because he’s not sure what else he can say. “But if anything strange does happen, I’ll report it to you.”

 

Shinigami gives him a small, tight, almost worried-looking smile, which wasn’t quite the reaction Kid was hoping for. “I know you will.”

 

“Was there any proof at all that Black Arrow might really be haunted?”

 

His father sighs. “Not…particularly, no.”

 

That was…vague. Foreboding. A pathetic excuse for a reassurance, really, but Kid presses on anyway. 

 

“I really want this, Dad,” He pleads. “I’ve been wanting to go to the casino for  _ ages. _ And I want to take more responsibilities, to prepare myself for my inheritance. That’s what you want me to do, right?”   
  


“Of course.”   
  


“And I want to help the Thompsons. I know, I know-” Kid goes on quickly, as his father opens his mouth. “But- would it really be that big of a deal? We needed someone to fill those caretaker positions anyway, and as long as we keep an eye on them, I can’t see any reason not to hire them. And as for the…ghosts, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Has anything bad or creepy happened there at all?”

 

“No.” Shinigami looks thoughtful, and at that look Kid feels a shred of hope begin to blossom in his chest. He was actually convincing him, it looked like. “And I suppose you’re right. It’s been decades since anything particularly strange happened in Black Arrow, or since any believable reports have come in.” When he eyes him, Kid knows he’s won. “Just...if you ever need to come home,  _ come home, _ alright? There’s no shame in wanting to leave early!”

 

_ That’s not happening, _ is all Kid can think, but all he says is “I know, Dad.”

 

* * *

 

Liz jolts awake, heart pounding in her ears.

 

It takes her a second to make sense of her surroundings. Her shitty, Dollar Store earbuds are softly playing the crooning sounds of Adele in her ears. She can feel Patty’s presence nearby, a sense that hasd developed after years of hardly ever being apart and having to take care of her for as long as she can remember. In front of her, in the driver’s seat, is the back of a head of a man she only vaguely recognizes, and around her is undeniably a “new car” smell.

 

_ Right.  _

 

They’re in the car that Rich- Brat- Who- Got- Them- Fired is having to take them up to their new job. Outside, Liz can see a sweeping landscape of mountains, trees, and a long winding road in front of them. From the looks of it, they’re the only car in sight.

 

It’s  _ way _ out of her comfort zone. Liz had looked up this Black Arrow place as soon as Rich Brat had told them that they were hired, and while she had known it was a bit out of the way from the hoity-toity vacation district that was probably the closest sign of life to the place, it feels a bit more out of the way than expected. 

 

It makes her feel a bit irritable. And a bit nervous, though she’d never admit it. She’s a city girl to the core, and she dislikes the idea of going more than two miles away from civilization, where there’s probably no cell service, no nearby convenience stores or large crowds of people, no matter how fancy this casino was supposed to be  _ (which, judging by the pictures online, was  _ **_very_ ** _ ). _

 

Because no matter how suffocating they can be, crowds offer shelter, a thin veil of security. Liz is has heard many horror stories of what can happen miles away from civilization, away from the crowd, and it’s nothing good. 

 

Everything about this situation is making her a bit wary. Going to an isolated, old place in the middle of the mountains is just the tip of the iceberg. Dealing with Rich Brat, who she can certify is a giant pain in the ass after having to deal with him in retail, wasn’t ideal either. Hell, she had been a bit shocked that he’d kept his word and gotten them that job, though it wouldn’t surprise her if his rich daddy usually gave him whatever he asked for.

 

At the very least, she’s hoping the place isn’t rundown or dusty, that the pictures she saw online actually live up to real life and aren’t just meant to fool suckers who don’t know better. The pay is the only reason she's actually gone along with the kid's campaign to make himself look like a charitable person, and staying in a fancy place that only rich people can afford might actually make this whole disaster worth it.

 

Emphasis on  _ might _ .

 

“Liz, Liz, Liz-”

 

“What?” At the feeling of the finger prodding her arm, Liz pulls out her earbuds to focus on a curious-looking Patty.

 

“Are you still asleep?”

 

She doesn’t point out the obvious. “No. Is something wrong?”

 

“Nothing. I’m just bored. It’s taking forever to get to the arrow place, and I used up all my origami paper.” Patty gestures to her lap, where what looks like an army of paper animals are piled up and overflowing onto the seats. “Wanna play tic-tac-toe?”

 

“Sure.” Liz glances over at their driver, unsure of how he’ll react to the mess in the backseat, but he seems content to ignore them. That, or he didn’t actually care that much. It might not actually be his car they were in. “And don’t worry, we’ll be there soon. I think.”

 

“Okay.” Liz can feel Patty regarding her with wide, curious eyes. “What do you think about all this?”

 

“About what?”

 

“This.” Patty turns, and gestures through the car window, at their surroundings. “It’s kinda pretty, don’t you think?”

 

Liz glances outside at the view of the mountains that surround them. It’s nice, in a standard, landscape-ish way. The sky is a deep blue, the trees are green, the mountains are a pale sandy color, and if they took a second to stop and sit outside, there would probably be birds chirping. The mountains themselves are impressive, towering higher than any building she’d ever seen, although that only makes her more nervous rather than awed. “I guess.”

 

“I’ve never seen the sky this blue,” Patty says, and Liz feels her sister’s chin resting on her shoulder, peering from behind her head. “Have you?”   
  


“I don’t know. I don’t really remember.” Though Liz has never been one to pay attention to the view, if she has to be honest with herself. Patty has always been the one to comment on the shapes the stars make in the sky, the amount of fog in the distance, the cloud that kind of looks like a squirrel, the weird-looking tree in the park.  

 

“It would suck if the car broke down though,” Patty goes on. “Then we’d be stuck forever, and we’d probably freeze to death and die when the winter comes.”

 

“Don’t talk like that,” Liz grumbles. “It’s bad for my nerves.”

 

“And then we’ll be popsicles for the squirrels to eat-”

 

“Patty!”   
  


Patty snickers, and Liz fights the urge to sigh.

 

* * *

 

She’s been around casinos before, once or twice when she and Patty were still living with their mother. Some of them were glitzy, some of them were seedy, some were small while others were large, so on and so forth. 

 

But Black Arrow isn’t like any casino she’s seen before.

 

The minute they make it past the fortified iron gates they’re greeted with an expanse of green lawn, twisted and sculpted topiaries, and paved roads. It all looks impeccable, like the front of a mansion.

 

Patty gets very excited at the topiaries. “Liz! Look! That’s a giraffe!” 

 

And then they actually see the building.

 

“Holy shit,” Is all Liz can say.

 

Their first glimpse of the actual casino is a slanted, pointed roof. 

 

Once they actually turn the corner, Liz sees immediately that the place is big. Way, way bigger than she thought it would be- low, wide, but with tall, slanted roofs. She vaguely knew what the place looked like thanks to the Internet before they arrived, but in person it looks downright strange. Like a weird, dark combination of an mansion and one of those old colonial houses- slanted, pointed roofs with fixtures that shoot straight up into the sky like arrows, dark walls made of stone, and what looked like  _ stained glass windows, _ for fucks  _ sake. _

 

_ There’s no way this is a casino. This is the brat’s second manor where he practices witchcraft or something- _

 

But no, there’s a driveway in front of the main building there’s a rotating cycle of cars that seem to be leaving, and all of them are probably thousands of dollars. The people getting into them look similarly expensive, and she can spot several uniformed bellhops carrying around luggage.

 

To say she’s intrigued is an understatement. And maybe even a little excited. All the negative thoughts she’d been having throughout the car ride were beginning to evaporate then and there.

 

The casino’s interior doesn’t really do much to lessen that intrigue, once they’re actually led inside by their chauffeur. The lobby is all faded marble and blood red carpets and  _ very _ antique furniture. The ceilings are high, and a huge chandelier that might be as big as the apartment Liz lived in with her mother when she was a little girl glittered above them. Huge, winding staircases spiraled up to the second floor, and thick, heavy-looking curtains decorated the windows.

 

“I feel like a princess!” Patty whispers no-so-quietly, eyes manic with an excited glee. “Are we really staying here?”

 

Liz gives her a nod, shooting a wary glance at their escort who’s done nothing but look stuffy and have them follow him around in order to make sure he hasn’t heard them. She’s doing her best to act calm in order to save face, but inside she can barely fight back to urge to flail and squeal like a little girl  _ (because this place is gorgeous, holy shit, her twelve year old self would be having a  _ **_conniption fit_ ** _ if she could see this-). _

 

“Mr. Albarn!” Their escort calls, suddenly.

 

And that’s when she notices a red haired man with a displeased expression approaching them, maneuvering his way through the clusters of departing guests with ease.

 

_ Guy in charge _ , her brain immediately registers.

 

“Hey, Enrique.” The man eyes her and Patty for a second, and Liz’s guard goes up as he gives their escort (Enrique?) a nod. “Thanks. Can you take the girls’ things up to their rooms, please?”

 

Enrique the escort actually gave a stiff, slight bow before turning heel and striding right back out the front doors from where they had came. 

 

“I take it you two are Elizabeth and Patricia?” The man (Albarn?) asks now directed at them. His eyes are narrows a bit, somewhat wary, clearly sizing them up. He’s obviously heard about them.

 

Liz sizes him up right back- about a good head taller than her, lean frame, wearing an expensive, yet standard-looking suit, a dress shirt in a  _ horrible _ shade of green, cross pins on his collar, about mid-thirties. He definitely looks distinctly unhappy, but he wasn’t really looking at them with any sort of displeasure, more like warniess. Maybe he wasn’t getting paid overtime for this or something.

 

“Liz and Patty,” Liz says after a second, because she kind of dislikes being called Elizabeth, and she knows Patty’s not much a fan of being called Patricia.

 

“Alright. Liz and Patty then. I’m Spirit Albarn, I work for Kid’s dad. I’m supposed to meet you two here and show you around, give you a laydown of all your responsibilities, that kind of thing.” 

 

So Kid wasn’t actually showing them around himself, then

 

“Where is he?” Liz asks, crossing her arms. 

 

“He ran into some car problems, but he’s on his way.” Albarn regarded them for another second, before jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “You two hungry?”

 

* * *

 

The kitchen is a white, sterile-looking place, with gleaming chrome counters and white tiled walls. There are a handful of cooks that look as though they’re packing up various pots and pans and packing and sealing away food, to Liz’s confusion.

 

“What kind of sandwich do you want?” Albarn asks, motioning for one of the cooks.

 

“Peanut butter,” Patty says firmly, solemnly, as if she’s given a lot of thought to this. She’s sitting next to Liz at one of the counters, feet swinging and eyes watching the bustling cooks in front of them, looking as invested as if she was watching a movie. “With a bunch of pickles on top.”

 

An extremely disgusted expression crosses Albarn’s face, but to his credit, he doesn’t comment. “Liz?”

 

“Turkey,” Liz says, and he nods at the cook, who immediately turns and heads back into the bustling kitchen. “How come they’re leaving?”

 

“S’cuse me?”   
  


“Them.” Liz gestured at the scurrying cooks. “It looks like they’re all clearing out. In fact,  _ everyone _ looks like they’re clearing out.”

 

“Yep. Didn’t you know? The entire place is closing.”

 

Liz stares at him. This is new information for her. “What?”

 

“The staff’s all being sent off, and we’re closing everything up for the winter. The only ones who’ll be up here are the remodeling crew, you two, Kid, and me.”

 

“Really? They’re closing the entire casino?” Patty asks curiously. “Just to remodel the lobby?”

 

“No, we usually close for several months around this time of yea anyway. The snowfall gets real heavy for about a month or two, and it’s expensive to keep the roads open. We reopen towards the end of the winter, or at least when the snow lets up.”

 

“Like- completely closed?” Liz asks, with a mild surge of panic. Heavy snowfall? A completely closed casino? In the middle of the  _ mountains? _ “There’s no other staff that are going to be here? Other than you and Kid?”

 

“And Kid’s tutor, actually.” The look on her face must say it all, because Albarn quickly rushes to add onto his statement. “Oh, don’t worry, we have all sorts of emergency supplies- flares, first-aid kits, that sort of thing. Just in case the worst happens. We have a radio on every floor, and there’s an emergency station only about a mile from here. And if we ever really have to get back into town, we have a couple of snowcats in the side garage that aren’t that hard to use. As long as you know how to drive a car, you should be fine.”

 

“Will we have hot chocolate too?” Patty asks. “And blankets and heat and all that winter stuff?”

 

Albarn looks thoughtful. “Yeah, probably. At the bare minimum, we’ll definitely have heat and blankets. I’ll check and see if we’ll have hot chocolate, though.”

 

“Cool,” Patty says happily.

 

Liz still feels uneasy. Radios are good. Snowcats sound good too. And Rich Brat  _ had _ said that the casino would be closing for the renovations, but she hadn’t actually realized that there would be  _ no one else  _ other than them. “So we’ll be fine?”

 

“Unless the heat goes out,” Calls an unfamiliar voice at the doorway. “And unless we get murdered. That’s happened before here.”

 

The new voice startles the  _ shit _ out of her, and when Liz whips around to face the other man standing in the doorway she’s met with a vision of gray hair, glittering eyes, and a very unnerving grin curled around a cigarette.

 

“What are you doing here?” Albarn sounds surprised, but not concerned, which is somewhat comforting. “Most of the workers don’t arrive until tomorrow.”

 

“I like being spontaneous.” The man strides forward, smoke trailing behind him, gesturing at Liz and Patty with a slight nod. “Who are these two?”   
  


“I’m sorry, did you say murder?” Liz asks, her voice sounding a bit too loud even to her own ears.

 

“Yep,” The man says cheerfully. “This place is supposedly haunted.”   
  


**_Haunted?_ **

 

_ Oh hell  _ **_fucking no._ **   
  


“Are you serious?” Liz demands. “Who are you?”   
  


“That’s Stein,” Albarn grumbles. “He’s part of our remodeling crew. Just ignore him.”

 

“You’re irritable,” Stein comments.

 

“Of course I am!” Albarn explodes. “Shinigami’s probably going to make me miss Christmas with my daughter in order to babysit Kid, who’d be  _ just fine _ here by the way- !”

 

“Your daughter hates you.” Stein glances meaningfully at Liz and Patty. “His daughter hates him.”

 

“How come?” Patty asks curiously, ignoring how Albarn visibly looks like he wants to break something over Stein’s head. It would almost be funny if Liz wasn’t still a bit panicked over the little “haunted” detail she hadn’t known coming into this place, something she distinctly feels she  _ should have known _ coming into this place.

 

“Can we get back to how this place is haunted?” Liz demands. “Because no one mentioned that to us until now!” Then she notices the cook standing next to her awkwardly, holding a plate of food in each hand. “Oh. Thanks.”

 

“Thank you!” Patty adds.

 

“Supposedly a bunch of people got murdered here,” Stein says as Liz’s sandwich is placed in front of her and Patty eagerly takes hers from the hands of the cook. “Black Arrow used to be a headquarters for bootlegging in the 1920’s, and the lady who ran it had heavy ties to the mafia.”

 

_ Awesome.  _

 

“Is it really haunted?” Patty asks Albarn curiously, as casually as if they were discussing the weather.

 

Albarn shrugs. “Supposedly.”

 

“No one told us about this,” Liz says, vehemently. 

 

“Are you going to be showing them around?” Stein asks.

 

Albarn sighs. “Yeah.”

 

“I’ll come with you.” Stein sits down on the stool next to Patty, letting out another dangerously unhealthy puff of smoke. “I haven’t been to this place in while, it’d be nice to make sure everything’s still where it’s supposed to be.”

 

“Can you tell us more about the ghosts?” Patty asks.

 

“Sure!” An unnerving grin spreads across Stein’s face.

 

Albarn again looks like he wants to throttle him, and Liz is beginning to sympathize with that sentiment.

 

* * *

 

“-One of the most important things you two need to do is check the pressure on the boiler. It’s an old boiler, and it’s very sensitive to temperature. If it’s too high or too low, then you have to adjust the pressure to make sure we don’t all explode and die-”

 

Mr. Albarn had given them both a notebook for them to take notes, but as much as Patty tries to keep her mind from drifting off, she keeps failing. The little notebook is cheap, flimsy, and probably came from a dollar store, but paper was paper and Patty tested it out by scribbling pictures of giraffes, of the twisty-looking chandelier in the main lobby, the really big and pretty necklace she saw one of the departing guests wearing when they had passed through the main lobby. All Mr. Albarn is doing anyway was talking about the boiler in detail, which is boring. Liz seems to be paying attention though, so Patty lets herself tune out and wander around the dimly-lit, creepy looking basement filled with furniture and all sorts of stuff that weren’t being used that they were currently standing in.

 

Black Arrow really felt like a castle when she and Liz had walked in. The only thing that was out of place were the slot machines and poker tables they passed earlier, and Patty came close to making a suggestion to get rid of them before realizing that they were, in fact, in a casino, and having slot machines and all that was technically the point of a casino.

 

She likes it though. She really does. 

 

Kind of.

 

But the longer she’s here, the more she gets the feeling that something about this not-castle is  _ off.  _ The longer Mr. Albarn leads her and Liz around to show them the expanse of the casino, the more Patty feels like there’s something  out of alignment. Like a bad back. Or a puzzle with a piece missing.

 

No one else seems to notice. Mr. Albarn breezes through the place like he owns it (and maybe he does, he never actually said what he did for Kid’s father anyway), and now he stands seemingly unflappable and undisturbed. Liz just looks bored, has looked bored since they arrived, scribbling in her notebook the instructions that Mr. Albarn was giving her and giving up on poking Patty to pay attention since they passed the blackjack tables. And Mr. Stein’s flipping through a worn-looking phone book he must have pulled out from one of the piles of junk, completely non reactionary to everything going on around him-

 

Wait. No. He’s staring at her over the edge of his book, studying her through his glasses so intently it almost looks like he’s looking through a microscope. When she meets his gaze, his eyes dart back down to the pages in the book. He doesn’t look frantic that he noticed her noticing him noticing her, in fact, something about it is almost...expectant.

 

That settles it for her.

 

As Mr. Albarn goes on and on about the boiler, and how to set it at the right temperature, or how if it becomes too overheated then the entire place will blow up, Patty shuffles over to Mr. Stein, who doesn’t look at all surprised when she taps him on the shoulder, looking up at her calmly.

 

“Does this place feel weird to you at all?” Patty asks, bringing her voice down low so that Liz won’t hear. She gets easily freaked out sometimes, and Patty doesn’t want to scare her.

 

“Oh absolutely,” Mr. Stein says without any hesitation, and his book snaps closed as he tosses it back into the junk pile. “You can tell, can’t you?”

 

“Yup. A lot of the time I can tell when a place feels weird. Liz says I have good instincts.”

 

Stein flicks a cigarette out of his pocket. “Hm. That’s what I thought. Well, you’ll get used to it. Living here, I mean.”

 

“Really?”

 

Stein gives a nonchalant shrug. “Sure. Black Arrow is just an old place. It’s been a casino since gambling was illegal. It’s seen a lot, been through a lot. That leaves certain scars.”

 

“Scars?”

 

“You know. Red marks. Like burns, maybe even blood.” His head is tilted downward, and the glint in his glasses makes it hard to tell where he’s looking, but she knows he’s looking at her from the corner of his eye. “You can’t see the scars?”

 

“No.”

 

“Ah.” He looks a little disappointed. “Well, not a lot of people can.”

 

“Can you?”

 

Stein nods. “They’re all over the place, here.”

 

Patty ponders that for a moment. It certainly makes sense, then, why she feels as though this place is skewed, out of alignment.  _ (And it certainly makes sense that people have scars too)  _ “Does that means it’s bad?”

 

“Not necessarily.” He’s taking a lighter out of his pocket, and glances over at Mr. Albarn before flipping it open. “A lot of place have scars. People, too.” He gives her a side glance. “You and your sister have a few.”

 

Patty scowls, because that doesn’t sound good at all. “How do people get scars? How do places get scars?”

 

“Because some people lie.” The end of the cigarette begins to smoke, and Stein flicks the lighter closed. “Some make mistakes. Some hurt other people. Some do horrible things. Some have  _ been _ through horrible things. That kind of thing leaves a scar. Bright, bloody red ones. And from what I can tell, they don’t completely fade. They never do.” 

 

Patty watches as he inhales a puff of smoke, and exhales through his nose. She wrinkles her nose at the smell- she’s never really liked the smell of nicotine, not even when Liz smokes.

 

_ (Her mother was a chain smoker, for example and sometimes it feels as though the stench has never washed off of her) _

 

“And those scars often leave stains. People are messy by nature, and when they die or otherwise do something horrible, it leaves marks on places. Black Arrow is just one of the many places where people have made a ton of messes.”

 

“You said people have died here,” Patty remembers.

 

Stein gives her a nod.

 

“So it really is haunted?”

 

Stein shrugs. “Not sure yet. I haven’t spent enough time here to decide yet. All I know for sure is that this place is  _ covered _ in scars.”

 

“Are done being creepy?” An extra voice cuts in.

 

Mr. Albarn has his hands in his pockets, and he looks annoyed. Liz’s eyes are likewise narrowed.

 

“Not until four,” Mr. Stein responds, without missing a beat.

 

Patty can’t stifle the giggle that escapes her, especially when she sees Liz roll her eyes.

 

Mr.  Albarn sighs. “Kid’s upstairs. We’ll meet him in lobby, and we’ll go from there. Liz, Patty, do at least one of you know how to keep the boiler from exploding and killing us all?”

 

“Yep,” Liz says, tapping her notebook with the tip of her pencil. 

 

“Good.” Mr. Albarn turns, gesturing at them to follow him.

 

“What did he say to you?” Liz mutters to Patty as they oblige, heading backs towards the lobby, footsteps falling into time with Patty’s without even thinking. Patty rarely notices it anymore.

 

Patty gives a non-commital shrug. A part of her wants to explain to Liz, but she’s…hesitant.

 

_ (Lizzie’s always been the strong one, the one to make the tough decisions and push them into action, but she’s always been terrified at what lurks beneath the shadows) _

 

“Dunno,” Is what she says instead. “He’s really weird.”

 

Liz gives her a side-eye, which indicated that she wasn’t buying it. “Yeah. He gives me the creeps.”

 

Before Patty can respond, their driver, who Patty had sort of assumed had left already, pushed through a collection of departing guests and stumbled up to Mr. Albarn. 

 

“Enrique?” Mr. Albarn sounded surprised too. “Is everything all right?”

 

“Kid,” Enrique manages, and Patty notices that he looks downright panicked. “Kid, his- his  _ brother’s here.” _

 

Albarn stops dead in his tracks. Something in his expression sends a prickle of unease down Patty’s spine- there was shock there, but also something akin to…horror?  _ “What?” _ __  
  


“Kid has a brother?” Patty asks, because she can’t be the only one who’s wondering what’s going on. 

 

She doesn’t get an answer. 

 

“Hurry,” is all Enrique says, before he takes off, Albarn right on his heels.

 

Patty glances over at Stein, who just shrugs before following them. So Patty does too, ignoring Liz hissing at her to stay put, breaking out into a run in order to keep up.

 

She can see Kid as soon as she reaches the semi-empty lobby. He looks as well put together and expensive as usual, with a nice-looking black sweater that probably costs more than the entirety of her current Goodwill wardrobe. 

 

And then she notices the man in front of him.

 

Or, more accurately, facing off against him, because the two of them look more guarded and jittery than a couple of starving rats in a standoff against a piece of scrap.

 

Nevertheless, there’s distinct chill that rushes down the back of her neck the second she sees them together. 

 

She can’t really explain  _ why, _ though.

The man’s tall, about a good head taller than Kid. He’s got a scruffy-looking red coat, but nothing particularly out of ordinary. His collar is high and his scarf is wrapped in a way that half of his face is covered, but other than that she can’t explain why he gives her a  _ very _ distinct sense of the heebie-jeebies. 

 

“Why is he here?” She faintly hears Mr. Albarn hissing to Enrique, before raising his voice. “HEY! ASURA!”

 

The man jumps almost two feet in the air at Mr. Albarn’s voice, and Patty can see his one of his eyes go wide under strands of long, dark hair. Mr. Albarn looks like he’s going to lunge across the room and clock the new guy in the face (which would actually be pretty cool), before Mr. Stein grabs him by the shoulders and hauls him backwards (to Patty’s mild disappointment).

 

“Calm down Spirit,” Mr. Stein mutters. “You’re a professional, right?”

 

“There’s a restraining order against him!” Mr. Albarn snarls, struggling to get out of Mr. Stein’s grip but clearly not making much progress. “He’s not supposed to get less than a mile away from Kid!”

 

“What’s happening?” Patty says, repeating loudly, because it feels as though Mr. Albarn forgot she and Liz were there.”

 

Mr. Albarn stops, narrows his eyes at them, before gesturing over to Enrique. “How about you show these two up to their rooms?”

 

“Sure thing boss,” Enrique says, before giving them a nod. “Come on, girls.”

 

“Um-” Patty glances over at Kid again. Suddenly, she feels a bit uneasy, about turning her back on the man in front of him. “I-I don’t know-”

 

Kid meets her eyes briefly before glancing back down at the floor, expression concealed.

 

“Come on, Patty,” Liz mutters, and Patty lets herself be pulled away.

 

But not before Stein meets her eyes, and whispers to her from the corner of his mouth.

 

“That one’s scarred,” He murmurs, eyes darting towards the man in question.

 

Patty blinks. Glances one more time over at Kid, at the man in front of him.

 

Who’s meeting her stare head on. His eyes feel piercing, almost violating, and when he narrows his eyes Patty feels another chill go up her spine.

 

“Come on, Patty,” Liz mutters again, and Patty lets herself be pulled away.

 

* * *

 

Patty’s quiet ever after Enrique dumps them at their designated suite  _ (“most of the employee suites are in the east wing, you and your sister will be sharing one”) _ . Unusually quiet, in fact. Liz distracts herself by taking stock of all the nice hotel-level accessories that are place in their room- a fully stocked mini-fridge, quality mini-shampoo and conditioner bottles, nice-smelling wrapped soaps, soft sheets (she’s going to raid the rest of the rooms for this stuff for  _ sure).  _

 

Meanwhile, Patty shows minimal interest. She’s been spending most of the time staring glassy-eyed at the large, wide-screen television, eyes not quite watching it even though it’s blaring at a high volume.

 

About three hours after they were left in their suite, with the sun already having gone down a sudden, brisk knock on the door makes them both jump.

 

“Who is it?” Liz calls.

 

“It’s me.” She recognizes Albarn’s voice. “Can I come in?”

 

Liz gets to her feet, shutting the bathroom cabinets closed again, stepping over her discarded boots on the floor, and padding over to the door before opening it.

 

Albarn looks even more worn-out than before, expression drawn and weary. “You two getting settled in all right?”

 

“Yeah.” Liz glances over at where Patty sits. “Patty, you good?”

 

Without looking back at them, Patty gives a thumbs up.

 

“Great.” Albarn shoves his hands in his pockets. “So. About that…scene from earlier-”

 

“With the brother, right?” Liz asks, curious if she can get any answers from him. There  _ had _ to be some juicy rich people drama in regards to that whole situation, and she was curious. “You said Kid had a restraining order against him?”

 

Albarn coughs. “Uh. Yeah. His name’s Asura, actually, and he’s...caused trouble before. We managed to get him to leave. There was a bit of a scene. The situation’s been handled, though, and I just wanted to let you two know that.”

 

Liz felt a flicker of unease. This place was already haunted,  _ apparently _ , the last thing she wanted was a creepy guy wandering around the place too. “Is- was he dangerous?”

 

“Eh...not necessarily.” Albarn looks distinctly uncomfortable. “I doubt he would have done anything. But you never know. Plus, he was violating his restraining order.”

 

“Did you call the cops or anything?”   
  


“Nah, he left before then. The authorities were notified, though, so don’t worry. Everything’s fine now.”

 

“Good,” She says, not really sure what else to say. “Anything else?”

 

Albarn shrugs. “Nothing much. You’re probably tired from your trip, and I know I’ve been drilling you two all day. We’ll let you hunker down for the night.”

 

Liz gets the distinct feeling this also means that Albarn also wants to desperately hunker down for the night, judging by worn-out and irritable the man looks. “What about dinner?”

 

“Dinner? Oh. Well, you know where the kitchen is. Kid’s tutor, Marie, volunteered to help   provide some of the meals during the reconstruction, but she’s a bit tired from the journey too. But I know the pantry’s stocked with all sorts of stuff, so you can just grab whatever you want.”

 

That actually sounded pretty nice. Liz had a brief vision of grabbing as much food as she could carry, and spending the night watching TV and pigging out in a nice, luxurious hotel room with Patty, in a high-end casino with no one to bother them.

 

Actually, it sounded nice. Really nice, even. 

 

Haunted or not, they would probably never get a chance like this again. Once this job was over, they’d probably be back onto the streets trying to get another one. The only reasonable option that Liz could see was to milk their current lap of luxury for everything it had.

 

“Cool,” Liz says again, now desperately wanting Albarn to bug off. “Good night, then.”

 

To her satisfaction, Albarn didn’t really look like he wanted to stick around either. But he gave her a nod anyway. “Good night. If you need anything, the phones in each room are connected to the front desk, which is connected to me.”

 

Liz nods, and it feels like the front door can’t close fast enough. Immediately, she flounces back over to Patty, flopping down next to her and unable to keep the grin off her face.

 

“Did you hear that?” She asks. “How about we run down to the kitchen and grab some snacks, huh? All the snacks we want.”

 

Patty didn’t really respond, which caused her excitement to dwindle a little. “Okay,” Was her only response.

 

Liz felt herself frown. “Are you okay?” This is the third time she had asked this question. The previous two times Patty had just shrugged.

 

(She keeps thinking about what Stein had said to her sister-  _ “That one has scars too.” _ \- about that man earlier, Kid’s brother apparently. The hell did that mean? The guy definitely looked like a bit of a whack-a-doodle, but he didn’t have any scars, from what Liz could tell.)

 

This time, Patty actually responds. “I don’t know if staying here’s a good idea after all.”

 

Liz stares at her. “What do you mean?”

 

“Dunno,” Patty says reluctantly. “I’m just...getting a weird feeling about everything. Kid’s brother was really creepy.”

 

Liz feels her brows go up. Normally, this sort of situation is the other way around- usually  _ she’s _ the one complaining about something creepy, and Patty’s the one who’s trying to reassure her. 

 

Then again, Patty’s always had the better instincts. She has a tendency to notice certain things before Liz did, such as when something seemed a bit more sketchy than they actually were. Liz would think she would know what sketchy looked like, but apparently not always, because Patty’s intuitiveness has gotten them out of potentially bad situations in the past.

 

Not to mention, she didn’t scare easily. So if she found this place creepy, there was a good chance she was on to something.

 

But, at the very least, they have this one night. And she wants is Patty to enjoy it. Even if they were only here because of a trust fund kid’s pity. Black Arrow is the nicest place they’ve ever been in, and just for one night Liz wants to pretend that everything’s fine. Even if it ends up biting them in the ass later.

 

“Give this place a chance, okay?” Liz says, trying not to sound too hopeful. “It actually doesn’t seem bad at all to me. It doesn’t seem that creepy.  If something seems shady, though, we’ll definitely leave.”

 

“Did you bring your pistol?” Patty asks softly.

 

Meaning, one of the two twin handguns that the shared- one for Patty, one for Liz. They had belonged to one of their mother’s boyfriends, that Liz had stolen when Patty had dropped out and they had officially kicked themselves out of the house.

 

Those guns had protected them better than Liz had ever dreamed. Because no matter how tough they are, no matter how tough they’ll be, they were still two girls alone on the streets, and having a bit of steel to flash certainly gave them a hell of an edge.

 

Liz’s gun was currently at the bottom of her duffel bag, wrapped in a few pairs of underwear.

 

Liz gives her sister a grin. “Of course.”

 

“Good.” Patty’s picking absentmindedly at one of the worn belt loops on her jeans. “I did too.”

 

She sounds a bit more relieved. Liz is glad. She gives her a poke in the shoulder, and grins when Patty looks up at her.

 

“We’re fine,” She says, a bit firmly. “Let’s get some food.”

 

Patty doesn’t look completely relieved, but the prospect of food seemingly wins out, and she nods. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

_ “Oh, where are my manners? How are you, sir?” _

 

_ He blinks over at the woman, still shuffling the cards against the table, but looking at him with a polite smile. “Pardon?” _

 

_ She gives a light, almost girlish laugh. “Oh, don’t look so owlish. Fine, no small talk. We’ll get straight into it.” She taps the edges of the stack of cards against the surface of the table, before setting it face down in front of her. “Have you had your fortune told before?” _

 

_ “I-I haven’t.” _

 

_ “It’s simple, really. You pick three cards- the first represents your past, the second represents your present, and the third represents your future.” _

 

_ “Oh. Alright.” _

 

_ The woman gives him another smile, before spreading out the cards into a fan against the table. “Well, go ahead. Pick a card, any card.” _ __  
  


_ Briefly, he wonders if he shouldn’t be here. But there’s something sharp, something edged in the woman’s smile and he can feel his (nonexistent) courage withering the longer she stares at him, silently ordering him to do as she says. _

 

_ So he takes a card, and flips it over to see. _

 

_ And immediately, he sees the images of a father and a son.  _

 

_ The images are like spectres, roaring in his ears and causing him to flinch, but the familiarity of what he’s seeing isn’t lost on him. There’s a father, tall, prideful, and powerful. The son who follows at his father’s coattails. Eager. Happy.  _ **_Adoring._ **

 

_ Then there’s screaming. Shouting. Sharp, red  _ **_anger._ **

 

_ “The first card represents your past,” The woman says. “The second represents your future.” She taps the spread of cards with a single finger. “Go on.” _

 

_ Again, he obliges, and when he flips his chosen card over the images change.  _

 

_ There’s an ever-shifting group of people, moving in a blur and moving through the days like clockwork. Milling about, living their lives, settling into an isolated cradle where they hide from the cold harsh winter. _

 

_ There’s a pair of sisters. A red-haired man. A blonde-haired woman. A reserved, quiet man in glasses, and many, many more.  _

 


	2. Chapter 2

“So after that, I made the _extremely_ scientific conclusion that conveyor belts don’t work the way they should-”

 

“That’s because conveyor belts aren’t supposed to be used for cooking, dummy-“

 

“So you collect swords? That’s cool!”

 

“Yes, I own a variety of katanas. I have a few with me now, actually-”

 

People-watching was something that Liz enjoyed immensely, and was a habit that she’d cultivated over the course of her life. The various remodelers hired to tear the lobby apart definitely weren’t an exception to this habit.

 

There was Free, had been arguing with Eruka ever since they’d reached the kitchen table. There were the group of six women that were collectively referred to as the Mizunes (though Liz probably wouldn’t be able to tell them apart even if she did know their names, so it was was just as well). They were seated in a line at the table and watching Free and Eruka bicker, a few of them letting out snickers every so often.

 

“What the hell is taking so long?” And then there’s Giriko, who Liz has heard has picked fights with almost all of the other workers.

 

“Calm down,” Justin, who had just been excitedly pestering Mifune about the latter’s apparent sword collection, grumbles. Mifune himself rolls his eyes next to him.

 

“Fuck off,” Giriko snaps. “I’m hungry, we’ve been working all day-”  


“So have the rest of us, and we’re not complaining,” Mifune points out.

 

“I don’t give a shit what you think,” Giriko snaps. “If Blondie doesn’t get her ass in gear, I swear to god-”

 

“Shut the hells up, she's making you dinner,” Justin snaps.

 

“He’s right,” Albarn says. “He’s sitting at the far right at the end of the table, next to the head of the table where Kid usually sits, and next to Stein, who looks just as happy at Giriko’s comment. “If it wasn’t for her, we’d probably be eating crap. She can take as long as she damn well wants.”

 

Giriko’s eyes narrow, but before any argument could potentially break out, there’s the familiar sound of a rattling cart from down the hallway.

 

“We’ve got chili tonight!” Patty’s voice trills, causing Marie to laugh as she rolls the cart over to Kid’s empty seat. Patty trails behind her carrying a large crock pot under her oven-mitt covered hands, and shooting a grin at Liz that she returns.

 

“Patty, put that down on the table and start handing out plates?” Marie asks. “Actually, Liz, can you help her with that?”

 

“Sure,” Liz says, and gets to her feet, chair scraping back behind her.

 

So far, Marie, Kid’s tutor he brought along in order to keep up with his was probably her favorite person at the casino. She’d volunteered to help prepare meals alongside Liz and Patty, giving them much-needed instruction in everything culinary, saving them a lot of work and stress that came with having to prepare meals for people like Giriko on a daily basis. Asides from that, she was probably the easiest person to talk to out of everybody. Kid was Kid, Albarn was always off doing god-knows what, Stein was crazy, and all of the other workers were either extremely busy or just plain didn’t want to talk to a dumb kid. Marie was kind of a breath of fresh air, in that sense.

 

“What took you so long?” Giriko snaps. “We’ve been waiting for a hell of a while.”

 

    Marie raises her eyebrows as Liz takes the plates. “Was it a while?”

 

    “Of course not,” Justin says, sending a glare at Giriko. “We’re fine.”

 

    “Completely fine,” Mifune agrees. “You’re a saint for making us dinner like this.”

 

    Marie flushes a bit, with a pleased smile. “Well. I gotta learn how to cook somehow.”

 

    “Learn to cook faster, too,” Giriko grumbles.

 

    “Kid wasn’t feeling well,” Marie says, and Liz can see a flicker of irritation cross into her expression. “I took a plate up to his room, he’s resting now. That’s why I _apparently_ wasn’t as efficient as I usually am, today.”

 

    “Is he alright?” Albarn asks, brows furrowed as Liz sets a plate in front of him, then Stein.

 

    “I think so. He seemed a bit tired to me.”

 

    “Doesn’t surprise me,” Liz hears Giriko grumble as she sets a plate in front of Mifune, who murmurs his thanks, before setting another plate in front of Justin. “Brat probably wore himself out by yelling at us, the little shit.”

 

    Liz bites back a snort, even as Justin hisses at him to shut up. Because in all honesty, it’s probably true. The brat was a hell of a supervisor, watching the workers go about their routine and checking up on them on a strict schedule throughout the day, referring back to the blueprints and giving people an earful if they didn’t live up to those standards. Giriko is notably, a regular offender.

 

    “And Giriko,” Marie adds. “You could always make your own dinner, if I’m not efficient enough for you.”

 

    It’s very clearly a threat, and Liz couldn’t quite hold back a snicker at the look on Giriko’s face- a cross between utter, childish rage and indignation.

 

    She’s finding that’s been happening a lot lately- her having a hard time holding back a giggle, a smile, and even once or twice, a laugh. It’s proportionate to the number of time’s she’s lounged in the jacuzzi tub in her and Patty’s suite, the number of times, after their chores are completed, they nick a bunch of snacks, watch television on the biggest TV screen they’ve ever had, snuggle up on the warm, soft couch together, sometimes not even making it to their beds.

 

_(They do make an effort to sleep in their beds, though, because sleeping their beds isn’t something they’ve had since they were little)_

 

    She’s happy. Life actually feels _good_. For once, she can actually relax.

 

And oh, she knows it won’t last. Going back is going to be the worst thing she’d ever experience _(because just a single_ **_taste_ ** _of luxury, or privilege, in the mouth of a girl who’s had to fight through life tooth and nail, only makes her crave for_ **_so much more)._ **

 

That’s why in the past few weeks, she’s been snitching a few things here and there- a crystal vase, a silk pillow, a china teacup- things that could earn her and Patty some cash when this gig ends and they get back home. That’s why she’s considered sneaking into Kid’s room, or maybe into Albarn’s, to raid their wallets, pick off a dollar at a time, until they have a wadful of cash to take home when their time is up, Kid’s guilt complex is fulfilled, and they’re right back where they started. She has to be careful- there’s security cameras throughout the casino, and they’re hard to avoid- but it’s always a benefit to look at towards the future.

 

No matter how good the present is.

 

But still. She can laugh. She can enjoy watching Patty laugh. She can enjoy staying in a beautiful hotel room with luxuries she’s dreamed of since she was a little girl, she can enjoy watching her sister curled up in soft sheets and eat good meals.

 

She loves it up here. At this point, she doesn’t bother trying to escape the fact anymore. When else will they have a chance like this?

 

None of it will last, but it feels as though that doesn’t matter. Or at least, she can pretend that it doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

    _(He almost doesn’t recognize the man across the lobby)_

 

_(Until he somehow manages to pick out his face from a hazy blur of early childhood memories that are painted with the most terror he’d ever felt in his young life, that he can say he’d ever felt in his_ **_entire_ ** _life-)_

 

Kid feels as though he’s been in a bit of a haze the minute he stepped onto Black Arrow.

 

_(And now he’s back to having a recurring nightmare again, the one he thought he’d gotten rid of years ago-)_

 

    “Father wants you to call him at some point,” Kid says as he pokes his head into what he mentally refers to has the security room.

 

    It’s late, almost one in the morning. He’s typically in bed, but sleeping hardly works out for him these days.  Across the room, with his back towards Kid, Spirit gives a noncommittal grunt. With his only purpose of being here to essentially keep an eye on Kid and make sure nothing escalates beyond what Kid can handle, Kid can reasonably assume that the man is bored out of his mind. He’s been locking himself in the security room, where he can monitor the entire casino via video cameras set up throughout the premises, some hidden more than others. Kid can see his half-lidded, bored expression in the reflections of the several screens set up to display the various black and white security feeds, displayed on the various monitors on the wall in front of him.

 

    “Preferably immediately,” Kid adds.

 

    “Yeah, yeah.” A computer mouse clicks, and the feeds shift.

 

    “How are things?” Kid asks, stepping through the doorway so that he stands directly behind Spirit, peering at the array of black and white screens. “Has everyone gone to bed?”  


    “Mostly.” Another click. “Except for Free. He’s in the kitchen, it looks like. And the Thompsons, I think they’re still at the Blackjack tables-” The mouse clicks, and sure enough the confirming feed pops up. The two of them are sitting across from each other, playing cards stacked in front of them and a few in their hands. “Yeah, there they are.”

 

    _(Patricia- no,_ **_Patty-_ ** _had stared at Asura with an expression that had looked almost haunted-)_

 

_(-and Asura had stared right back at her)_

 

    “Any disturbances?” Kid asks, pushing the image out of his head.

 

    “In general? No.” Spirit clicks through the feeds again, displaying the lines of slot machines, the small ballroom, a few guest hallways, and the deconstructed lobby. “Everything’s pretty calm. Some snowflakes were falling outside earlier, the snow might be setting in soon.”

 

    _(In the dream he would be lying prone on the ground and the chill was settling in his bones and turning him into ice, so when Asura came and stabbed him in the heart he couldn’t even try to scream for help-)_

 

    “Cool.”

 

    “You feeling alright Kid?”

 

    Kid barely hears him. “Hm?”  


    It takes him longer than it should have to notice Spirit glancing at him, brows furrowed in concern. “I said, are you feeling alright?”

 

    ( _He’s been dreading the nights. When he’s lying alone in his room in the dark, he always feels as though there’s someone there, he’s been sleeping with the lights on, he’s never had this many nightmares in his entire_ **_life,_ ** _this entire place is just_ **_off_ ** _, it’s_ **_off_ ** _and he can’t explain_ **_why-)_ **

 

“I’m fine.”

 

Spirit’s look is very clearly not convinced, and suddenly Kid is very grateful he’s there. Spirit, Marie, and all the other workers, despite not knowing most of them that well.

 

He’d still stay at Arrow no matter what, but he’s still glad he’s bitterly glad he’s not alone in this place.

 

“How about you go play cards with the girls?” Spirit suggests. “It looked like they had a game going.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“You heard me.” Spirit turns around in his swivel chair, meeting Kid’s gaze dead on. “Take a break from studying and ordering everyone around and hang out with a couple of cute girls your age. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

 

Kid sighs. “I don’t know if they’d want me around. After-well, you know.”

 

“Why not? Yeah you got them fired, but I’m pretty sure you got them a better gig than working in retail.”

 

“Still-”

 

    “Well, if they’re still mad at you for some reason, there’s nothing wrong with trying to break the ice a little. And they are cute girls your own age, so it’d definitely be worth it-”

 

    “Thank you, Spirit.” Kid cut him off, though, he realizes, Spirit’s right. Attempting to make amends and resolve differences wasn’t exactly a bad idea. “Though you have a point. I think I will see if they’ll let me play.”

 

    Spirit gives him an approving nod. “It’d be good for you. By the way, did you ask your dad if I could go home yet? It’d be hard to leave once the snow sets in-”

 

    “No, I forgot. Ask him when you call him.” Kid makes his exit then and there as Spirit lets out a groan.

 

* * *

  
“Draw.”

 

    He can hear the cards slam over-enthusiastically onto the table from the other room, before Patricia-- Patty, he reminds himself, that’s what she preferred to be called-- lets out a whoop.

 

    “I win! I win!”

 

    “Nice job,” He hears Elizabeth-- no, Liz-- say. “Want to play again?”

 

    “Sure.”

 

    “What are you playing?” Kid asks, and it almost feels as through his voice is cutting in through the scene in front of him.

 

    Both girls give a start at his entrance. They’re both in their pajamas, Kid notes, or at least, pajama pants. Liz even has her hair piled up on her head in what looks like a nighttime bun.

 

Both of them grace him with very similar glares.

 

    “The hell?!” Liz snaps. “Don’t sneak up on us!”

 

    “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to scare you.” Kid takes a step through the doorway until he’s standing several feet away from their tables, hovering at the edge, not coming any closer unless they let him. He nods at the stack of cards. “What are you playing?”

 

    “Whammy.”

 

    “Huh?”

 

    “Whammy.” Patty gathers up her cards, taps the edges on the table and places them on top of the rest of the deck. “That’s what we’re playing.

   

    “Whammy,” Kid echoes. He’snever heard of it. “What’s that?”

 

    Patty crosses her arms, scowling. “None of your _beeswax._ It’s mine and Lizzie’s game, we don’t play it with anybody else.”

 

He feels a flicker of confusion, before understanding. “Oh, did you make it up yourselves?”

 

Patty nods. _“I_ did. I just wanted to play something other than Gin Rummy.”

 

“Makes sense.” He glances over at Liz, who just narrows his eyes at him. Internally, he blanches, because Liz has a _hell_ of a glare. “And you only play it with Liz?”

 

“Yup.” Patty gathers the entire deck and places it in front of her.

 

So it was a sort of bonding thing, then. Like an inside joke between friends, or an informal family tradition. Liz and Patty definitely seemed close, so it would make sense that they would have those kind of things.

 

“Well.” Suddenly, he feels awkward. He doesn’t want to intrude on their time, after all. “I was just wondering if I could play, whatever you were doing. I don’t think I’ll be going to sleep for a while.

 

The two glance at each other with looks filled with silent communication, though he can’t quite decipher what it is.

 

“I don’t want to…interrupt,” He goes on. “Whatever Whammy is, I mean.”

 

They regard him, silently, and Kid tries not to shift under their scrutiny.

 

“Go Fish is better with three people,” Patty says after a second.

 

Kid blinks. “What?”

 

Patty just grins at him. “It’s better with three people. Right Liz?”  


“Uh-” Liz looks surprised. “Yeah, I guess.”  
  
    Kid isn’t sure if he gets it. “So…can I play?”

 

“If you want,” Patty says.

 

He glances over at Liz again, who’s eyes dart to Patty, then Kid, then back to Patty again, before shrugging.

 

“You know what? Why not.” For a second, her gaze remains focused on Kid, before turning towards the card deck. “And hell, maybe this is the point where we could thank you for getting us out of retail.”

 

A warm feeling blossoms in Kid’s chest. “Really?”

 

She shrugs. “Sure. Take a seat.”

 

They end up playing eight rounds that night, at Kid’s insistence, but the Thompsons don’t actually seem to mind.

 

* * *

 

_The first thing she hears is music._

 

_The plinking,_ **_chipper_ ** _sound of a piano, a few notes_ **_stringing_ ** _around her ears before a_ **_soft_ ** _chorus of horns chimes in, swinging the melody into the song._

 

_By the time the singer begins his chorus, she can hear the_ **_hum_ ** _of other people- the blend of a multitude of people talking. Whispering gossip, giggling at one another, and she can see them now, smiling and gleeful and shiny…_

 

_A chandelier gleams above her, all twisted coils of reflective diamonds and glass._ **_Beads_ ** _of light shoot down around the rest of the wide expanse of the room, gleaming off of spectacles, of glittering jewelry, headpieces._

 

_And then there’s her, standing dumbfounded in the center of it all, surrounded by the_ **_swarm_ ** _of people, of glitter, of tables where they sit and talk, where a man is shuffling cards and doling them out to people sitting in front of him-_

 

_The tug on her sleeve makes her jump, and she finds herself face-to-face with a pair of pale eyes._

 

_They belong to what looks like a kid a little younger than her. A teenager so thin and slight it looks as though they’re going to snap in half at any moment. Their hair is shaggy, unkempt, out of place in the surroundings around them. Their figure, covered by what looks like a long, black tunic, and their features are androgynous enough that Liz can’t be quite sure if they’re a boy or a girl._

 

_“The L-Lady wants to see you, Miss,” they say softly._

 

_Her voice feels sticky in her throat, but she forces it out anyways. “The- the Lady? What Lady?”_

 

_“She wants to see you,” They repeat._

 

_“Who’s ‘she’? Who are you?” Another thought occurs to her. “Where are we? I don’t remember coming here-”_

 

_“Don’t.”_

 

_The voice is so soft that she barely hears it._

 

_“Please,” the kid whispers. Their hand closes around Liz’s arm, tightly. “Please. Come with me.”_

 

_Liz tries to jerk away. “Hey-”_

 

_“Please-”_

 

_“Crona!”_

 

_Time slows down. Or at least, that’s what it feels like._

 

_Every single one of Liz’s senses goes numb. Sights, sounds, touch, and smell all blend together in a messy, vague blues._

 

_If things felt hazy before, now Liz feels as though she’s moving through molasses._

 

_She sees a woman standing in front of them, staring disapprovingly at Crona. Liz’s mind vaguely comprehends that she’s wearing a black, slinky dress with a fur collar. Her hair is blonde, twisted into an elaborate updo. The minute she notices Liz staring at her, she grants Liz a winning smile. “Liz. Dear. I’m so sorry about my child.”_

 

_“You…” Liz’s mind tries to connect the dots. “You’re…”_

 

_“Oh, you poor thing.” The woman’s voice carries what can only be described as a motherly tone. “Here. Come with me.”_   


_“I don’t know where I am,” Liz tries to say._

 

_“I know.” The woman steps forward, and a black gloved hand wraps around Crona’s wrist and pulls their arm away from Liz. “I know, sweetheart.” The same gloved hand rests on Liz’s shoulder, gently. “Come with me.”_

 

_And she starts leading Liz forward, guiding her through the crowds of people that seemingly part like curtains as they approach, allowing them to move freely._

 

_The grip on her shoulder, while gentle, is somehow still_ **_firm_ ** _._

 

_“Wait-” Liz stumbles over her words. Sentences. She has to form a sentence, in order to ask a questions. She has so many questions. “I don’t- where are we going?”_

 

_She can hear the smile in the woman’s voice, sunny and bright as day. “To get your fortune told, dear.”_

 

_“My-my fortune?” The haze of people is clearing, but Liz’s mind isn’t. “Why am I getting my fortune told-?”_

 

_They stop at a curtain. It’s a heavy, dark red, sheet of fabric that makes Liz dizzy the longer she stares at it, and when it’s pulled back Liz is ushered towards a dark wooden table that she sits at. The woman sits in front of her, and draws out a stack of playing cards._

 

_“Now, it’s simple,” the woman says, spreading the cards into a fan in front of her. “You pick three cards. One represents the past, one represents your present, and the last represents your future. Go ahead.”_

 

_“Why am I here?” Liz asks. Her head is beginning to pound, everything feels so strange and far away._

 

_“Oh, please don’t be rude.” The woman gives her a soft smile, but there’s a distinct_ **_edge_ ** _there that wasn’t quite there before. “Come now, don’t be shy. This reading’s on me, completely free.”_

 

_Free. A part of her brain reminds her that free is good, actually, and she sluggishly wonders if she should take this lady’s cards after all._

 

_“Go ahead,” the woman repeats, spreading the cards even wider. “Don’t be shy. It’ll really only take a minute.”_

 

_Well. It couldn’t hurt, right?_

 

_Liz takes the first card._

 

_Almost immediately, she sees her younger self._

 

_(Screaming, crying, begging with her mother, her mother screaming, crying, yelling at her before the night had passed and the morning had found her mother’s bed empty and her and Patty all alone-)_

 

_(Working long hours in retail, sleeping under an overpass, the frustration of not quite having enough for food, Patty’s head resting on her shoulder as she sleeps and herself staying awake because falling asleep in this part of this neighborhood didn’t seem like a good idea-)_

 

**** _“Take another card,” a soft voice orders,_ **_pounding_ ** _into the back of her head like a drum._

 

_Numb, Liz complies._

 

_(-And then there’s a boy in a nice suit staring down  at them in an alley, she snaps at him, tears him down for getting them fired, and he does the last thing he expects and offers her and Patty a job-)_

 

_(-Dusting off everything on the first floor, making daily trips into the creepy basement to check on the stupid boiler, watching Kid bark out orders and freak out over every little mistake as the workers look annoyed, chagrined, eating dinner every night and helping Miss Marie with dinner, carefree bliss that she settles into and wraps herself around like someone who hasn’t slept in ages-)_

 

**** _“Here,” the woman says, and her cards are pressed into her hands._

 

_There’s no sensation at all first. She can’t even feel the cards in her hands._

 

_Which is odd, she vaguely notes._

 

_It’s getting warmer by the second though. Warmer, and warmer, until her hands feel as though they’re on fire, they are on fire, she smell them burning-_

 

_She doesn’t realize she’s screaming. All she can feel is the the heat, the agony, the smell of her own flesh_ **_burning_ ** _-_

 

_“Here,” the woman’s voice says, and she can barely hear her over her own screaming. “I’ll give you your next card.”_

 

_And then a third card is pressed into her palm._

 

_(And it’s too_ **_MUCH_ ** _, the world is dissolving into a hazy_ **_MESS-_ ** _)_

 

**** _(There’s too many pictures,_ **_FLICKERING_ ** _back and forth and flipping back and forth and back and forth-)_

 

_(Like images on a film reel, stuttering back and forth and back and forth, between a never-ending stream of her mother’s pervy clients, of holding Patty’s hand as they flee down an alley, of huddling under an old awning in the rain, of the people who looked at them with_ **_pity,_ ** _with self-importance, before going on with their happy lives with their kids and parents and families and she hates, them, she HATES THEM ALL-)_

 

_Then reel skips, and centers onto Patty._

 

_“Liz!” She says excitedly, eyes shining._

 

_Her face is round, pink, and healthy. Her hair is done, shiny, clean, and pristine. The biggest grin Liz has ever seen on her lights up her face like a Christmas tree, a pure, untarnished state of utter bliss._

 

_“Liz, look!” She turns, twirls, the skirt of her beautiful, sparkling ball gown fanning out around her. “My dress is so pretty! I can’t wait to wear it to dinner tonight!”_

 

_There’s a beautiful spread of food on a long, graceful table. A large, beautiful, chandelier glitters above them, casting delicate, glittering splashes of light on the thick rug, the large windows that show a beautiful, glittering cityscape._

 

_And somehow, Liz knows it’s all hers._

 

_“This could happen,” The woman murmurs in Liz’s ear, her voice sounding almost like a hiss. “This could all be yours. You can leave everyone else behind, you_ know _they don’t matter. Take Patty, and give her everything your ever wanted for her.”_

 

_It’s still burning. She can still smell the palms of her flesh burning, but somehow it seems so far away. The pain almost feels as though it’s nonexistent, now._

 

_There are tears rolling down her cheeks anyway._

 

_“...How?” She whispers._

 

_She feels a ice-cold hand on her cheek. And the woman smiles._

 

* * *

  
_“Just tell me how everything’s going, Spirit.”_

 

    “For the last time, there’s nothing really to report. _Really.”_

 

Spirit feels like a damn parrot at this point. He’s been dreading talking his boss for his very reason. Every single time they’ve talked, he’s been stuck having to repeatedly answer the same questions over and over in an attempt to reassure him.

 

But in all honesty, considering that Shinigami’s paranoia primarily is a product of worrying about his son, who’s been up in in an apparently haunted resort that’s bound to be snowed in at any day now, Spirit can’t bring himself to be _too_ irritated.

 

For the most part, anyway.

 

“Look,” He goes on. “If anything strange _has_ been happening, or if I’d noticed _anything_ sketchy, I would have told you by now. You know I would have.”

 

    There’s a sigh on the other end of the line. _“I know, I know.”_

 

    Spirit sighs, plucks the faux-bear fur blanket draped over the side of the couch, and flops down into the nearby armchair. The sound of the roaring fireplace in front of him is the only sound in his entire suite, and sounds almost deafening as a result. “And honestly? I seriously doubt this place is haunted. I mean, it’s a little unnerving being snowed in twenty miles away from the closest town, but other than that? This is a nice place. It’s been pretty accommodating, actually. Everyone’s been in a great mood.”An image of Giriko pops into his head. “Well. For the most part, anyway.”

 

    There’s a long, long silence before his boss finally responds. _“I suppose that’s a good thing then.”_

 

    Spirit fights the urge to sigh. While he supposes the past few weeks had been sort of nice, what with being able to see Stein and Marie (both of whom being old friends he hadn’t seen in months, despite the former being a consistent pain in the ass by disappearing into the depths of the casino and not doing the work dictated by his contract), and having the chance to take a breather from all the work his boss had been having him doing (though he mostly spent his days watching the entire casino from security cameras), all he really wanted was to go home. His ex-wife was finally letting him see their daughter for a few hours the night of Christmas Eve, and while things were supposed to wrap up a few days before then, he wasn’t sure if he would make it back in time.

 

_“Listen,”_ Shinigami finally speaks again, and it almost makes him jump. _“I appreciate you staying with Kid. And I promise you’ll be back in time to make your visit with Maka, all right? Just do me a favor and keep your eyes peeled.”_

 

    “Alright.” The anxiety hinging on whether or not he’d be able to see Maka for Christmas settles a bit, though there’s a lot still nagging at him. “You know, you never really explained why you think this place is haunted.”

 

_“What?”_

 

    “You heard me.” Spirit gets the distinct feeling that maybe he shouldn’t ask more than that, but he presses on anyways. “I never thought you’d believe in ghosts and all that, guest reports or not. You never even really gave me details on the lady that owned the place, other than that she and her sisters were murdered by her kid and she was supposedly involved in the mafia.”

 

    Shinigami doesn’t respond.

 

    “Did something happen that you’re not telling me?” Spirit presses. “Because if that’s the case, I feel like you should tell me.”

   

    The response comes quicker than her predicted. _“There was a girl named Meme Tatane.”_

 

    “What?”

 

    _“Meme Tatane.”_ Something in his boss’s voice sounds…off. _“About ten years ago, she came in with her two friends for a sort of vacation for one of her friends’ eighteenth birthday. They stayed for a about a week.”_   


    _Meme Tatane._ Spirit flings the blanket out of his lap, gets to his feet, and pads over to the small kitchenette counter, where his previously-sleeping laptop lies in wait for him to open.

 

    _“As time went on, Meme started acting strangely. She became quiet, increasingly anti-social. Yelling at her friends, laughing to herself when no one was around. Her friends would even hear her in the bathroom, yelling obscenities at her reflection in the mirror.”_

 

    Spirit opens his search engine, and types in her name. The little wheel pops up on screen, loading…

 

_“And at some point, she just snapped. Or at least, that was what it looked like. The night before they were supposed to leave, Meme cornered one of her friends with a butter knife and attacked her.”_

 

    Sure enough, her name pops up on screen, though there’s only one or two news articles articles detailing it.

 

    “Attacked her?” Spirit repeats, feeling his eyes go wide. He clicks the most recent one, and quickly skins through. Sure enough, there’s a brief outline of what Shinigami just told him- girl goes nuts and attacks best friends, girl arrested, girl locked in a mental hospital, undergoing treatment.

 

_“Yep. Her friends managed to restrain her and called the police. I actually met with the girls later, all three of them, right after it happened. The friends were completely distraught, but what I found interesting was that they both insisted that Meme had undergone a completely personality change in a span of a week. In fact, they spent a solid hour trying to convince me that she was possessed.”_   


    An uncomfortable feeling settles in Spirit’s stomach. “Hm.”

 

_“And I talked to Meme herself soon after. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes, Spirit. She seemed almost catatonic. Almost like a living zombie. It was hard to get any information out of her, but, notably, she mentioned something about talking a woman with a long braid. And, in addition to that, a fortuneteller.”_   


    “So?” Spirit asks, getting the distinct sense that this was going somewhere.

 

    _“The owner of Black Arrow, Medusa Gorgon, the woman who was killed by her own child, started out as a fortuneteller. According to the stories, she’d entertain some of her guests by telling elaborate futures with playing cards, and, supposedly, a lot of them came true. Not to mention she has a younger sister, Shaula, who’s most known feature was a long, black braid that went down her back.”_

 

    Spirit’s feels a chill down his spine. That’s...a definite coincidence. A major, major coincidence. “Was Shaula murdered by the kid too?”

 

_“Yes.”_

 

    “Ten years ago. Is that when you first called the priest?”

 

    “Yes.”

 

    “Did you keep Black Arrow’s name out of the whole thing when that girl was arrested?”

 

    “I kind of had to,” Shinigami admits.

 

    Spirit has no idea how to respond. Unspoken is that not only did the girl speak of a fortuneteller, she also tried to stab her friends to death. Similar to how the kid almost a hundred years ago actually stabbed his mother and aunts.”  


    “So now that you know, please promise to keep an eye on things. A very, very close eye on things. I also hired Stein for extra eyes-”  


    “Stein?” That comes as a surprise. “Wait- really? Why the hell are you making him watch out for things if that’s what you’re making me do?”  


    _“Because sometimes there’s things you miss.”_

 

    Spirit feels a flash of irritation. “Hey!”

 

    _“Calm down, it’s nothing personal. Some people just...see things differently than others. Some more than others.” There’s a small, wry chuckle. “I don’t quite know how to explain it to you, Spirit. Like most people, you see things pretty much at face value. Stein doesn’t. I know that he’ll catch things that you won’t.”_

 

    Spirit has no idea what any of that means. “What’s that supposed to mean? Like- ghost things?”

   

_“Again, I don’t really know how to explain it to you. It’s hard explaining it to someone who hasn’t experienced it.”_

 

    This was getting to be too much. “Experienced- experienced _what?_ Are- are you telling me you see dead people?”

 

    Another wry chuckle. _“Not exactly.”_

 

    “Not exact-” He splutters. _“What?!”_

 

_“It doesn’t matter,”_ Shinigami says, abruptly. _“You’re there because I know you’ll keep an eye on the people around you, and. if worst comes to worst, I know can trust you to look out for Kid. Now, after all these years with absolutely zero incident, I sincerely doubt that worst_ will _come to worst, but there’s enough of a nagging voice that convinces me that I want to be careful. I want you to keep an eye on things. Just promise me you will, alright?”_

 

    Spirit could argue. Try to get his boss to explain exactly what he means, because Spirit can’t make sense of any of it.

 

    But in the end, he’s here to do his job, no matter whether he sees his daughter, and also he knows from Shinigami’s tone that he’s not getting any more information out him tonight.

 

    So he just nods, forgetting that his boss can’t see it. “Sure. I promise.”

 

* * *

 

 

    Patty has never seen real snow before.

 

    She doesn’t think that the dirty, slushy piles of ice that sometimes pop up during the winter at home count. Neither do the drizzly, watery flecks that flick down from the sky, more hail than snow, really.

 

    No, she wants actual snow. She wants landscapes of white, little flakes coming down from the sky, she wants to do the thing where she sticks her tongue out and catches them on her tongue so that the melt in her mouth.

 

    So when she wakes up and sees white flecks beginning to coat the glass of the window, she lets out a whoop and scrambles to the window to watch.

 

    “Liz!” She calls. Liz wasn’t in her bed when she woke up, but she assumes that she’s in the other room, watching TV or something. “Liz, come look!”

 

    There’s no response.

 

    “Liz?” Patty gets to her feet, goes into the other roon, to where the kitchenette and the television are.

 

    Liz isn’t at either of them.

 

    She frowns. Maybe she already went to start her chores, though usually she waits so they can eat breakfast together.

 

Maybe there was an emergency or something. One that required her to wake up and start dusting earlier than usual.

 

So Patty heads towards the refridgerator, because she might as well do the same thing.

  


    Patty moves through her chores until lunch, but she doesn’t see Liz. She skips lunch to look for her, wandering around the casino and trying to remember where Liz’s chore route takes her.

 

    At some point, she comes across the lobby. It’s a torn up shell of what it once was, carpet torn up, furniture gone, boards torn off the walls. It looks as though they’re replacing the latter, bit by bit.

 

    Kid and Mr. Albarn are standing in the middle of it, arguing with Free, Eruka, and Mifune. Stein and the Mizunes stand to the side, all of them looking distinctly annoyed.

 

    “What do you mean Justin and Giriko never showed up?” Mr. Albarn doesn’t sound very happy.

 

    “I mean they never showed up,” Mifune snaps. “It’s past noon now, and they were supposed to show up hours ago.”

 

    “They’re not responding to their radios,” Kid adds. “Have any of you- Patty!” He notices her now. “Patty, by any chance have you seen Justin and Giriko?”

 

    “No,” Patty says, and begins slowly descending the staircase down to the carpet-less floor. She has to be careful- Justin had told her that she can’t lean on the railing too much, because they’ve been working on it as part of the remodeling. Most people were taking the elevator down, but Patty just likes the stairs better.

 

“See?! No one has seen them!” Eruka snaps.

 

“Have you guys seen Liz too?” Patty asks, finally making it down to the floor. “I can’t find her either.”  


    “Liz?” Kid furrows her brows. “No, I haven’t.”  


    “Oh, so Liz is missing too now? Perfect,” Mr. Albarn snaps, throwing his hands in the air. “Look, they’re probably just- playing hooky, I don’t know. I’ll go and check on the security cameras to see if I can find them.”

 

    “Right.” Kid sighs, before turning towards the workers. “Everyone, just do your jobs for now. We’ll sort everything else out later.”

 

    Kid is good at being commanding, Patty had noticed. Despite being her age, he still seemed to have the ability to give out orders, even to people twice his age. She’d heard that he was supposed to take over his father’s fortune one day, so despite him being so uptight and whiny a lot of the time, she could see how he’d be good for the position.

 

    It was actually kind of cool to watch.

 

    “Will you look for Liz too?” Patty asks Mr. Albarn as heoasses her.

 

    “‘Course,” He responds, and he’s gone.

 

    The rest of the workers are all grumbling under their breaths, but they start to go back to work. Stein stands, and briefly meets her gaze before following his coworkers’ leads.

 

    She feels someone tap her shoulder, and turns towards Kid.

 

    “Have you finished your chores?” He asks. “If not, you should-” Aburptly, he stops. His nose wrinkles, and his face contorts into disgust. “Do you smell that?”

 

Patty squints and sniffs the air, and, faintly, she does. It’s faint, barely there, but it’s hard to miss what smells like rotting meat. “ _Ew_ , yeah.”   


“Do you smell that?” Kid calls, glancing over at the workers.

 

“Yeah,” Stein responds.

 

“What _is_ that?” Eruka’s nose is just as wrinkled as Kid’s. “Ew, it smells like a dead _body-”_   


    “Just ignore it,” Mifune says. “It’ll probably fade after a while.”

 

    Kid scowls, but doesn’t seem to have any response.

 

“I did finish my chores,” Patty says, trying to remember where the conversation had been headed. “I’m going to go and look around for Liz-hey! You should help me look for her.”

 

    He blinks, looking startled. “I can’t, I have to supervise-”

 

    “They’ll be fine for a little while.” Since two eyes are better then one, Patty isn’t taking no for an answer. She grabs his arm and pulls him behind her, ignoring his protests. “Besides, you’ve been watching them nonstop since we got here, that should be enough for a while.”

 

    “That’s not how it works-”

 

    She does convince him though, or maybe he just gives up complaining and follows her lead. Either way, she maintains a grip on his arm as they make their way through the casino halls.

 

* * *

  
  It’s quiet.

 

That’s really the only way to describe it. As they go through the halls, pass the slot machines, the blackjack tables, Patty feels as though there should be some noise other than their footsteps. There isn’t, though.

 

After a long, silent pause, Kid speaks. “I’m sure she’s alright.”

 

Patty huffs. She’s getting increasingly worried, and she feels as though Kid doesn’t quite get it. “She doesn’t do this though. We always eat breakfast together, and she wasn’t there. I haven’t seen her all day.”

 

“Spirit will probably find her,” Kid says. “There are cameras everywhere here, there’s no way he won’t be able to see her.”

 

Patty frowns. “What if she fell into a closet or something and got locked in though? Or found some weird creepy basement and got trapped in there by a ghost? Ghosts do that, right?”

 

Kid frowns, tilting his head slightly in consideration. “Maybe?”

 

“See? And who’s Spirit- oh, you mean Mr. Albarn?”

 

“Yeah,” Kid says. “You could probably call him Spirit if you want, he doesn’t really care-”

 

In the center of the hallway Patty stops in her tracks, and stares.

 

    Double doors. Wide, double doors that are bolted shut, sealed closed through age. Having gone through this hallway before, Patty reasonably assumes that they were there before, but she just hasn’t noticed until now.

 

It almost feels as though the doors are yawning. Beckoning, luring her inside.

 

She thinks she hears Kid give a soft gasp, but she isn’t sure.

 

    “What are these?” She asks softly. She lets go of Kid’s arm in order to trace her fingers over the surface of the wood. When she lifts them up, her fingertips are coated in dust.

 

    “The old ballroom, I’m assuming,” Kid says.

 

    “Ballroom?”

 

    “Yeah. It’s probably rundown as hell, so Dad closed it off for future remodeling.”

 

    “Then how come they’re remodeling the lobby?” Patty asks. “It was fine before, shouldn’t they be remodeling this instead?”  


    Kid shrugs. “It’s more expensive, I’m guessing. And Dad’s probably not really sure what to do with it. There’s already a ballroom downstairs, and these doors have been bolted shut since he bought this place.”

 

    “So he doesn’t know what’s inside?”

 

    “No.” Kid steps forward, grabs the handles, and half-heartedly pulls. “It just kind of...exists, I guess.”

 

    “Do you think

 

    “What are you doing?”

 

    The familiar voice echoes from down the hall, and Patty is overjoyed to hear it. Without hesitation, she whips around immediately to launch herself towards it. “LIZ!”  


    Her arms wrap around her sister, and almost immediately it’s like hugging an ice person. Liz’s skin, her clothes, are coated in an undeniable chill that causes Patty to shiver.

 

She steps back and grips her shoulders, frowning. “Where the hell were you?! You’re cold.”

 

    “Sorry,” Liz says.

 

    And that’s when Patty gets a good look at her.

 

    Liz looks utterly disheveled. She’s still barefoot and in her pajamas, something that Liz would never be in after noon, and her hair is a _mess_.

 

    Her eyes are also completely lifeless. There’s no other way to describe it- she looks as though she’s been utterly drained of life, an empty shell.

 

    Patty clutches Liz’s hands in her own, hoping her warmth will take away some of the chill. Unease is beginning to gnaw at her stomach, and the longer she searches Liz the worse it feels. “You were gone for a while.”

 

    “Was I?” Even Liz’s voice sounds _off,_ flat and drained of any sort of affliction.

 

    “Have you seen Justin and Giriko, by any chance Liz?” Kid sounds wary too. He’s staring at Liz with a faint expression of worry, visibly taken aback by Liz’s appearance.

 

    Almost at once, Liz’s demeanor changes. Her face contorts into a snarl, all of her features immediately turning slanted and angry. Patty feels her eyes widen, taken aback, and Kid actually recoils.

 

    For a long, horrible second it feels as though the world has narrowed down to the three of them- Liz, glaring at Kid with hatred that Patty has never seen from her, Kid, recoiled, frozen in place by that hatred, and Patty herself, smackbetween the two of them like a barrier.

 

    “Lizzie,” Patty says softly. Carefully.

 

    The hatred shatters, and the anger completely drains as Liz glances down at her. “Yeah?”  


    Something’s wrong. So, so wrong. “You okay?”

 

    Liz smiles, but there’s something _off_ about it, something Patty can’t really place. That alone makes her uneasy- Liz is easy to read, at least to Patty, anyway. Like an open book.

 

    “Hey!” Kid suddenly says. “Justin! Giriko!”

 

    Patty glances over Liz’s shoulder, and Liz turns too.

 

    Sure enough, there they are, standing side-by-side at the end of the hallway. The glare light behind them conceals their expressions.

 

    “Where were you two?” Kid snaps. “You missed half a day of work!”

 

    “Sorry,” Justin says, and Patty’s heart begins to pound because there’s something off about _him_ , too. “I forgot to set my alarm, and I slept through most of the day. I hope I didn’t convenience anyone.”

 

    “I just fucked off,” Giriko says cheerfully, _too_ cheerfully, especially for Giriko, and Patty swallows. “I needed the break, short stack.”   


    Kid stares at them, and something in his expression changes enough to confusion and caustic is bewilderment that Patty suddenly knows she’s not the only one who notices it. The _wrongness_ , the tension in the air, ready to snap of someone so much as breathes on it.

 

There’s a long, long pause before Kid finally speaks. “Get back to work. We’ll talk about this later.”

   

Immediately, almost in _tandem_ , they turn, and leave without another word.

 

There’s another long, long pause. Patty’s heart is hammering against her chest- because something is _wrong_ , things are so much more skewed than they were before. Before, she could almost ignore it, was ignoring it because she had been having fun, but now, with her sister standing in front of her looking like this-

 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Patty asks to Liz, knowing she won’t believe the answer she knows she’ll get.

 

“Of course,” Liz says. She’s smiling again. “I’m totally fine.”

 

A chill goes down Patty’s spine. Without even turning, she can feel Kid staring at them behind her.

  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

She lies on her bed frozen, flat on her back and stiff as a board.

 

Images wash over her like a tidal wave, numbing her senses and paralyzing her to the point that she can’t move. 

 

**_A ballroom,_ ** _ sparkling so bright it’s blinding. A mass of dancers, shifting and moving to upbeat, swinging music. _

 

_ And in the corner, a fortuneteller, standing next to a table holding a scattered deck of cards, over an unresponsive blonde girl slumped over in a chair. _

 

_ She’s muttering under her breath, incoherent, angry nothings, fingers and expression twitching, eyes half closed. _

 

_ The entirety of her forearms are an angry, scorched red. _

 

_ The fortuneteller smiles, a slow, snakelike smile. _

 

**_A staircase,_ ** _ grand and high. _

 

_ She doesn’t recognize the girl standing next to him, but she does recognize the boy standing on top of it from her childhood- the son of her father’s boss, who she’d played with when they were little. _

 

_ They’re standing on the top of the staircase, mouths open, expressions frozen in horror. _

 

**_A lobby,_ ** _ torn down to it’s bare components, a skeleton of a room. _

 

_ She sees her Papa.  _

 

_ It’s her Papa, lying on the floor, struggling to move, trembling hands staunching a flow of blood draining from his stomach. _

 

_ There’s a man above him, creeping towards him like a snarling beast cornering a wounded animal.  _

 

_ Dark hair, pale face, mouth twisted in a manic grin. _

 

_ Blood drips onto the floor, turning into a trail across the shining, new-looking floor. _

 

_ It reaches into a gaping hole, floor boards smashed through and torn up. _

 

_ The face of a corpse peers out of it, eyes glazed and wide, mouth open and overflowing with rot- _

 

Maka wakes up with a choked scream caught in her throat, recoiling into her blankets and doubling over as if she’s been stabbed herself.

 

And for what feels like an eternity, all she can feel are the tremors in her bones, the fear making her heart pound, and she covers her mouth with a fist to stifle the sobs forcing their way out of her mouth.

 

By the time her heart rate has slowed (though not completely), she’s decided enough is enough.

 

She throws back her covers and heads straight to her phone.

 

_ “We’re sorry, the person you are trying to reach has disconnected. If you need assistance, please call your provider.” _

 

She gets the same result when she tries to call again, just in case she dialed the wrong number.

 

She takes a deep breath, and tries her papa’s number, a number that she hasn’t entered in a long, long time.

 

_ “We’re sorry, the person you are trying to reach has disconnected. If you need assistance-” _

 

Out of frustration, she nearly slams her phone down onto the kitchen table.

 

Her nerves are flaring, sounding alarms in her head. Something’s wrong, she know it in the depths of her being, neither the Black Arrow line or Papa’s should be “disconnected”.

 

_ “Forest Service, how can I help you?” _

 

“Hi,” Maka says, taking a seat at the small kitchen table. “My name’s Maka Albarn, I’m the daughter of Spirit Albarn, who’s the manager up at the Black Arrow Casino and Resort.”

 

_ “Oh- well, what can I do for you?” _

 

“I’m trying to make a call up there, but it seems like there’s no connection.”

 

_ “Really? Well, I’m surprised to hear that. The storm hasn’t even started to roll in yet, but maybe the phone lines have disconnected. We can give them a call over the radio, if you’d like.” _

 

“That would be great. Could you do that now please?”

 

_ “Of course. Please hold.” _

 

The line goes to static, and Maka clutches the phone tight in her hands and silently sends pleas to whatever deity is on the high.

 

* * *

 

_ “This is Forest Service Headquarters, calling Black Arrow Casino and Resort. Do you read me? Over.” _

 

The office is deserted. There’s no one in sight, the halls are completely empty.

 

_ “This is Forest Service Headquarters, do you read me-” _

 

The radio is smashed clean in it’s center.

 

* * *

 

Maka’s close to falling asleep right there at the table when the ranger’s voice comes back on line and causes her to jump.

 

_ “I’m sorry Miss, but we tried to contact them several times but there was no response.” _

 

Maka’s heart sinks down into her stomach, and she feels almost sick.

 

_ “There’s chance it’s turned off, or maybe no one’s in the office. I can try calling again later, if you’d like.” _

 

“That would be great,” She croaks.

 

Something is wrong. There’s a lingering sense of _badness_ , like too-fresh food that was spoiling over by the minute.

 

“Can you call me back if you get ahold of them?”

 

_ “Sure Miss.” _

 

“Great. Thank you. Goodbye.”

 

As soon as the ranger hangs up, she phones Soul.

 

_ Pick up pick up, answer your phone just this one time- _

 

_ “Hello?”  _ Soul’s voice crackles over the line, distorted by the distance between them, and Maka almost cries in relief.

 

“Soul? I need your help getting a plane ticket.”

 

She’s been hoping she wouldn’t have to suffer through Christmas with Papa, but not like this.

 

* * *

 

Getting dragged into the middle of the woods was not what Kid had planned to do for the day.

 

“Where are we going?” Kid calls after Patty, who’s a good five meters in front of him.

 

“Away!” Patty calls back over her shoulder.

 

Kid lets out a huff, because that’s not exactly helpful information.

 

From the looks of it, they’ve hiked about a mile from Black Arrow and into the surrounding forest. It’s cold, easily cold enough that he can see his breath in the air. The snowfall has calmed down enough that they aren’t wading in snow, but it’s definitely a good two inches off the ground. The dark clouds above definitely signify that will change soon.

 

The trees around them point straight up high into the sky. They’re like an uneven array of pillars, scattered and chaotic, until it feels as though Kid’s lost in some kind of horde. There’s no path, so Kid just prays that it won’t snow again so that they could find their way back.

 

Patty, he’s finding, has a tendency to just grab him by the arm and drag him along to wherever she wants. It’s endearing, in an odd way, though Kid would normally never be put up with being dragged into the middle of a forest, and the only reason he's doing so now is because  he’d rather be dragged into the middle of the forest than stay for one more second in the casino, at the moment. 

 

Because ever since Liz, Justin, and Giriko’s disappearing episode, it feels as though things had gotten ten times worse. 

 

_ (The nightmares had already been bad before, but now he dreams of a severed head on his pillow pressed up against his face as he sleeps, it’s grin looking more like a slit when it notices it looking at him, he dreams of a black, dark mass attaching itself to his stomach and coming up his throat and out of his mouth, and the more he tugs at it the tighter it latches around his insides-) _

 

_ (And during the day, the air is undeniably heavy, so tense you can cut through it with a knife. Liz is quiet, she doesn’t join him and Patty in their now-nightly card games, Patty is quiet, Justin and Giriko now just seem off, never showing up for work much no matter how much they’re threatened, to the point where Kid has been talking to Spirit about just sending them both home-) _

 

“Let’s stop here.” 

 

They’ve come across a small clearing, a good fifty yards or so that somehow aren’t littered with trees. Patty unslings her backpack from her arms and drops it to the ground before kneeling down and rummaging through it.

 

“What are you doing?” Kid asks.

 

“Getting this.” Patty stands up and holds out a gleaming, silver end of a handgun towards him.

 

A handgun.

 

It takes Kid a second to fully, truly comprehend what he’s seeing. When he does, his voice sounds trill, even to his own ears. “Is that a  _ gun?” _

 

Patty doesn’t even flinch. “Yep.”

 

“Where the hell did you get that?!”   
  


“It’s mine,” Patty says simply. “I brought it with this-” She twirls it with ease in one hand, and aims it up in the air. Stuffed down the barrel is a thick wad of cotton, stuffed into a thick sock. “I’m gonna teach you how to shoot.”

 

Kid has never felt himself so utterly lost for words.

 

“This has to be illegal,” are the only words that come out. 

 

“No one will know.” Patty cocks the gun, and aims it at a nearby tree. “See, apparently if you stuff it with cotton, it acts as a makeshift silencer, so when you fire it doesn’t make any noise-”

 

There’s a click as she pulls the trigger, and the resulting gunshot is loud enough that it causes Kid’s ears to ring for the next hour or so.

 

There’s a hole in a nearby tree now, where the bullet blasted into it.

 

“Oh,” Patty says, after a stunned silence.

 

“Let’s not do that,” Kid says quickly, praying she won’t fire it again. “Can you please-”

 

“Maybe I did it wrong-“ Patty looks thoughtful as she squints and looks directly down the barrel of the gun.

 

Kid’s heart lurches, because he knows you are not supposed to do that. “No no no-don’t do that!”

 

“Hm.” Patty’s shoulders slump, and the gun goes limp at her side. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”

 

“It wasn’t,” Kid says faintly. “It really, really wasn’t, please put it away now.”

 

Without a word, there’s another click and Patty drops it back into her backpack.

 

“Okay.” Kid’s mind was spinning. The idea of Patty  _ owning a gun _ this  _ entire time _ was enough to make his head spin and for him to feel mildly terrified. “Okay. Please don’t do this again.”

 

“Okay.” Her shoulders slump even further. “You’d be good at it though.”

 

That statement takes Kid aback. It’s an unexpected compliment, but a compliment nonetheless. Despite everything, he’s actually a little flattered.

 

They stand in silence. Patty stares at the ground, and Kid begins to feel a twinge of guilt

 

“I just-” Her statement comes so abruptly, that Kid actually jumps. “I just wanted to get _ out of there _ . Liz hasn’t been acting like Liz, she’s grumpy and snappy at every except me and she’s so quiet, and it sucks.” Patty crosses her arms. “Nothing feels right. Everything feels so wrong. I don’t really know how to explain it, but it does.”

 

As she’s talking, Kid stares at her in surprise. 

 

So he’s not the only one who’s noticed the changes, then. Well, given that Liz is nowhere close to acting like she had been when she’d first arrived, it’s a given people would notice (Stein and Spirit in particular have been watching her like a hawk), but this is the first time someone’s actually commented on the change.

 

“Can I tell you something?” Kid asks. 

 

She blinks at him. Kid briefly wonders if this should feel weird. By definition, him and Patty aren’t really friends, exactly. Not quite. They’d really only known each other for a couple of months, and he isn’t quite sure if that’s long enough for him to call her his friend.

 

But Kid’s finding that he sort of likes her company. Likes talking to her. Has been for the past couple of weeks, during their card games, when Liz has been shut in their room and it’s just him and Patty.

 

And now, he’s starting to wonder if she’ll know what he’s talking about if he starts to describe everything he’s felt ever since he stepped foot into Black Arrow.

 

Maybe.

 

It’s easy to get the words out for her. Easier than for his father, at least. Every night, whenever he tries to explain to his father how exactly he knows that something is wrong, words fail him.

 

Because they feel ridiculous. Dumb, even. Even if his father does believe in ghost stories, whenever Kid plays out an explanation in his head it sounds  _ ridiculous _ . It sounds as though he’s breaking down over a responsibility he took on himself, something that he just  _ can’t _ do in front of his father.

 

That’s part of why it’s easier to explain, in front of her.

 

“I’ve been having nightmares,” Kid says, slowly. “Bad ones. And- you know the feeling you get when you walk into someone’s house when they’ve just had a fight with someone? There’s nothing in particular there, except for an angry person, but they’re so angry that the entire house is just sort of reeking with that anger. That’s the kind of feeling I’m getting. It’s tense, ready to explode at any second-”

 

“Wait-” She’s staring at him like he’s just sprouted another head. “You feel it too?”

 

Kid stops.

 

They stare at each other, scrutinizing. Sizing one another up.

 

And Kid’s heart hammers in his chest at the look in her eyes, one that looks too close to the one he’s been seeing pretty often in the mirror as of late.  _ Does she…? _

 

“Yeah,” He manages. “Ever since I got here.”

 

“Me too!” Patty’s eyes go wide. “It feels like...like it’s all skewed-”   
  


Kid lets out a choked laugh, unable to stifle his…relief? Amazement? Mild horror? One or the other, he supposed. “You feel it too. You feel it too, oh my god, I thought I was going crazy. I thought I was just overreacting-”

 

“No way, this place feels kinda fucked up. Feels really fucked up, actually. In the past few weeks especially.” Patty gives a half shrug. “It was kind of easy to ignore, though. Sometimes.”

 

“Easy?” Kid asks in disbelief. “Are you joking? I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since I got here.”

 

“I haven’t since Lizzie disappeared for half a day,” Patty says, grimly. “Things just feel...too bad. And we’re the only ones who feel it- well, Mr. Stein does too, actually.”

 

“I know. I know. And at first I thought it was just everything that happened with Asura-”

 

The minute Kid speaks his name, he clamps his mouth shut.

 

Patty stares at him for a minute, head tilted slightly. There’s a distinct, awkward pause.

 

“What does he have to do with it?” Patty asks.

 

That is  _ not _ something Kid wants to get into. “It was just…unnerving to see my brother again, after so long.”

 

_ (He was a child the last time he saw his brother. He was a child lying on the floor bleeding, staring around disorientedly as his father raged and his brother sobbed-) _

 

“Okay.” Patty doesn’t press any further. She doesn’t ask any questions, make any comments, but despite that Kid’s mind is already spiralling, straight down that slippery slope he’s been fighting against since he first arrived at Black Arrow and saw his brother standing in the lobby.

 

Because his brother had nearly twisted his arm off in a fit of rage when Kid was five years old.

 

Which, incidentally, was the age he was when his brother was kicked out of the house.

 

He’s the good child. That’s something Kid has known his entire life. He’s the one who’s the spitting image of his father, the one set to take control of Black Arrow when Shinigami retires, when he feels Kid is ready. It’s a legacy that he’s proud of, that he’s been training for and dreaming of his entire childhood, to be half the man his father is today.

 

He’s the good child, and Asura was the complete opposite. Even before he tore into Kid’s chest, Asura is the one their father never speaks of, Asura is their father’s biggest shame and regret and sorrow all rolled into one messy web of a person meant to cast a shadow onto.

 

Asura isn’t on their father’s office wall. There’s no trace of him anywhere. No family photos, no keepsakes, no possessions he left behind. Shinigami had made sure of that much. 

 

He was cast out, near-forgotten. Their father never mentions him, his name hasn’t been spoken in the house for years. It’s almost as though he had never existed. Kid will never forget coming home from the hospital and seeing every family photo containing his older brother gone, his room cleared out and remodeled entirely into a guest room with a different color scheme, all his possessions banished only to where their father knew.

 

It was almost like a magic trick. Make the man disappear. Conceal him using smoke and mirrors. Gone in thin air, never to be seen again, to the point where Kid has been going through his life as though he’d never existed. 

 

He feels a tug on his sleeve, and when he meets Patty’s eyes they’re searching. But at the same time, they seem almost soft.

 

“Want to build a snowman or something?” Patty asks. “Just so we don’t have to go back yet.”

 

And Kid shrugs. “Why not?”

 

* * *

 

Patty left with Kid a long while ago.

 

Liz had watched them go.

 

She burns as she remembers, because Kid shouldn’t even  _ look _ at Patty, let alone go anywhere with her. 

 

Patty should be by her side, because that’s what they _ do. _ That’s the way it  _ should be _ , the way it’s  _ always been. _

 

She sees no reason for that to change now.

 

These days, she feels as though she exists on a scale- when she’s with Patty, she feels balanced. Calm.

 

But the second another person comes into the equation-- Kid, usually, in his irritating tendency to hang around Patty more and more-- the scale tips and all Liz can feel is the urge to rip him apart.

 

Her intention was to follow them. As soon as she saw them leaving out from their bedroom window, she’d stalked out of her room and into the hallways, fuming.

 

She’d intended to follow them out into the woods, wherever the hell they were going. As she makes her way down the hallway, she slows, then stops in her tracks.

 

The tall, double doors that lead to the shut-off ballroom are wide open.

 

Not only that, the lights are on. White streamers, balloons, and tinsel are strewn into the hall, leading into the wide, open doors.

 

Footsteps soft against the carpet, Liz slowly walks down the hallway, and steps in through the doors.

 

A party is in full swing.

 

Clusters of people, twirling around in tandem on the dance floor, clustering around tables, laughs loud and bright and lilted against the steady strum of music being played by the band.

 

Despite all the commotion, Liz is only focused on one man.

 

She’s only him once, briefly, from across a crowded lobby at a distance.

 

But she knows him anyway.

 

“Care to dance?” Asura asks, voice soft, almost timid as he extends his hand to her.

 

* * *

 

In the woods with Patty, Kid has the most fun he’s had since he got to Black Arrow.

 

They build misshapen snowmen. They flop on their back and make snow angels. When the snow starts falling, Kid reluctantly convinces Patty that they should make their way back to the casino. On the walk back, Patty sticks her tongue out the entire way, wiggling in the air and running forward in an attempt to catch them on her tongue. She catches exactly eight, and that alone heightens Kid’s spirits.

 

It also feels like a good omen. Almost.

 

By the time they get back to the casino, Patty has her nose buried into the folds of her scarf, and Kid’s resorted to pulling his collar up over his ears. They’re reluctant to actually enter, glancing at each other as they step up the few stairs up to the entrance.

 

_ “There’s no shame in leaving early,”  _ His father’s voice whispers in Kid’s mind, and Kid files at the aside for future consideration.

 

“There’s supposedly going to be another blizzard tonight,” Kid says to Patty instead, stomping his feet against mat on the steps in order to get rid of any excess snow.

 

Patty scowls behind her scarf. “Why? We already had one.”

 

“I know-”

 

The loud, sudden crash from the inside of the lobby cuts him off almost immediately. 

 

It’s silent, afterwards. Kid exchanges a look with a startled-looking Patty, and they immediately push their way through the doors, and into the lobby.

 

The first thing Kid sees is Stein. Unmoving, lying on the ground.

 

The next thing he sees is the stairwell- or, more specifically, the stair railing. 

 

High up on the stairs, a huge chunk of the railing is missing, shattered in pieces that lie mostly on the ground, scattered around Stein’s limp form.

 

It doesn’t take long to put two and two together about what happened.

 

“Get Spirit,” Kid says, his voice sounding faint to his own ears.

 

There’s nothing else to say. Patty nods, and breaks out into a sprint.

 

* * *

 

“Just take the ‘cat, Marie.”

 

They’re gathered in the lobby, around a still-unconscious Stein. Marie, who’d been trained in first aid, had had Kid and Patty help her put his practically-shattered legs into splints.

 

Kid’s doing his best to resist pulling his nose over his mouth and nose. The stench that’s been permeating around the lobby has been ever-prevalent, even after he had Justin and Giriko dig through and try to figure out what it is. Though considering the two of them had consistently been acting odd (more subdued and quiet than usual), maybe they had missed something.

 

“Wouldn’t it be better not to move him?” Kid asks. “What if his head was damaged in the fall?”

 

“I think he’ll be fine,” Marie says, pushing a strand of golden hair out of her eyes. “It looks like his legs took the brunt of the fall, not his spine or his head. 

 

“We’ll radio the station and tell them you’re coming,” Spirit says. “If we’re sure of anything, it’s that he needs a hospital.”

 

“I’ll need help moving him,” Marie says, getting to her feet. “Spirit, will you help me?”

 

“Yep.” Spirit follows her lead. “Kid, radio the station?”

 

“Yeah.” Kid stands, and nods at Patty. “Come with me?”

 

“Okay,” She says, and they start off towards the elevator.

 

The small shred of carefree happiness he’d experienced earlier in the snow with Patty has faded. At this point, none of them had been supposed to go on the stairs. Free and the Mizunes had been working on the railings, and they were incredibly unsteady at most. 

Stein should have known that, so why the hell had he been on the stairs?

 

His unease only spikes to panic when they finds the radio in pieces on the floor of the manager’s office.

 

* * *

 

He leads her by the waist into a glittering fold.

 

The ballroom is beautiful. Liz feels completely engulfed by the bright lights, the pale walls, the loud, intoxicated cheer that permeates the air-

 

“Hello Liz.” 

 

The fortuneteller sits, wine glass in hand, at a table covered with a white cloth next to two other women. All of them look beautiful, clad in gorgeous, rich-looking dresses.

 

“Miss Medusa,” Liz says, giving them a wide smile. “Miss Arachne. Miss Shaula.”

 

“Hello dear,” Arachne says brightly, gesturing her over to them with a wave of her black fan. She in particular looks incredibly extravagant, with a high collar and her hair piled on top of her head and fastened with an elaborate, spider-like web of diamonds decorating her head. “Come, sit. We’ve been expecting you for a while now.”

 

A small, insignificant portion of Liz’s brain registers this as odd (she didn’t even know she was coming herself, so how would they know?) but somehow that feels unimportant, and it comes easy to ignore.

 

“Miss Arachne was the one who brought me here,” Asura says softly, pulling a chair out for her for her to sit in. “Well, sort of. Miss Medusa told my fortune, but it was Miss Arachne who met me first.”

 

“That’s nice,” Liz says, sitting down at the chair provided for her, before noticing there weren’t any more chairs left. “Oh- you’ll have to grab another chair.”   
  


“Take mine,” Shaula says, pushing her chair back and getting to her feet. “I think I’m going to get a drink.”

 

Asura mumbles his thanks, and takes the offered seat. Shaula gives one last, almost edged smile at Liz before she leaves, long, elaborate-looking braid trailing behind her. 

 

“I think I’ll take my leave as well,” Arachne says delicately, standing. “But please, help yourself to the wine.” A pale, elegant hand gestures at the half-filled, glass wine bottle. 

 

Liz blinks, noticing the tall, gleaming empty glass in front of her. “Oh- I don’t-”  _ drink,  _ she wants to say, but her mind feels as though it’s twisting around, weaving away from the word, until she can’t remember what it is that she wants to say.

 

“Go ahead and drink as much as you’d like, Liz,” Medusa says smoothly as she rises to her feet. “It’s on the house. Unfortunately, I have to take my leave as well. I need to check on Crona, make sure he’s in his room. Where he’s  _ supposed _ to be.”

 

“Crona?” Liz asks. “Who’s Crona?”

 

“My child,” Medusa says, dismissively. “He’s been…misbehaving, as of late.” She graces Liz with a winning smile. “But don’t worry about him.”

 

Liz isn’t completely sure what to say. “Oh. Alright.”

 

Medusa graces her with a nod and a small, final smile before turning heel, the blinding lights and shifting crowds making it seem almost as though she’s vanished in thin air.

 

“So,” Asura says, reaching one hand over to pick up the wine bottle to pour into Liz’s glass. She watches, transfixed as the dark red liquid slowly fills up the crystal glass. “Tell me. How have you been feeling, Liz?”

 

“Feeling?” She asks, picking up the glass. She hesitates to drink though, holding it to her lips.

 

“Yes. How has Black Arrow been treating you?”

 

She thinks of the soft beds, the beautiful halls and ballroom, the utter richness that drips from every corner. “I love it here. I wish Patty and I could stay forever.”   
  


“Oh, I know,” Asura says, turning the bottle towards and letting the red fill his own glass. “I was young the first time I came here. My father had just bought this place, and had brought me here to sign the papers. I remember the first time I stood in this ballroom. Even after my father and I became…estranged, I couldn’t resist coming back. Again. And again. And again.” He glances over at her. “Are you going to drink your wine?”

 

“Oh- uh, yeah.” Liz takes a tentative sip. Immediately, a sharp, somewhat sour taste explodes onto her tongue, though it’s not quite unpleasant. 

 

She takes another sip. Then an entire swallowful, the taste feeling somewhat numbing against her throat as it goes down.

 

“Nowadays, I suppose,” Asura says, pulling his glass to his lips and swallowing what looks like half the glass all at once. “I’ve been…preparing.”

 

“Preparing?” Liz follows his example, sipping again at her wine. 

 

“Yes. Lots of things are happening soon.”

 

Her head is beginning to feel a bit odd- as though it’s been filled with cotton. “Like what?”

 

“Well,” He says slowly. “Settling some…family matters, I suppose. That I should have taken care of a long, long time ago.”

 

“Are you talking about Kid?” Liz asks.

 

Asura scowls. “Why? Do you care?”

 

Liz snorts. “Hell no. He’s just the idiot who gave me and Patty a job. Because he felt bad for us” 

 

Asura’s eyes are odd-looking, she notices. An odd blend of red and gold, maybe even a little speckled, like a kaleidoscope. It’s hard to tell- little details in this ballroom seem to tend to blur a bit whenever Liz looks to closely at them. “Your sister seems to like him. My brother.”   
  


Dark bitterness scorches her from the inside.

 

_ (She plays cards with him, she talks with him, she laughs whenever he’s being particularly over-dramatic-) _

 

“Yes,” She hisses out. “She does. She’ll remember, though.”

 

“Remember?”

 

“Remember how I’m the only one she has. Remember that the rest of the world hasn’t done shit for us. Even our own mother left us in the dust.” She swallows the last of her wine, and holds it pointedly out for Asura to fill again. “Kid’s definitely no different.”

 

“That sounds difficult to watch,” Asura says, picking up the wine bottle again and refilling her glass. “Your sister placing her faith into the wrong people. I know what that’s like.”

 

“Yeah?” Liz swallows another gulpful of wine. 

 

“Yes.” He regards her for a second. “If I were you, I’d save her from that disappointment. Trust me, it’s the worst kind.”

 

“How-” The word sounds somewhat slurred in her mouth. “Sorry. How?”

 

He just smiles. “Well, obviously you’ll have to- to take him out of the equation.”

 

“Hm.” She vaguely hears the  _ clink _ of her own wine glass against the surface of the table as she sets it down. She feels almost as though she’s floating, just barely grazing against her own awareness.

 

“Though your sister might not take it well,” Asura’s voice goes on. “She shares a bit of his…paranoia. Not all of it though. And I wouldn’t count on my father not figuring out that something’s happening, either. But luckily, almost everyone else involved in this situation is completely ignorant. The only exception was that man- Stein, I believe his name was. He got a bit too curious, but that’s been handled.”

 

“Wha…paranoia, what do you mean, by paranoia…?” It’s an effort just not to stumble over her words. “Sorry…I think the wine- is it affecting you, at all?”

 

“Oh no,” Asura says, a slow grin creeping across his lips. “No, this wine has no effect on me.”

 

“...Oh.”

 

“As as for your other question…see, this paranoia is something I see as a bit of a talent. Many people don’t have this talent.  A lot of people don’t really. And some have more than others- your sister has a bit, for example, but not as much as my brother. Or me, for that matter.”

 

“...I still don’t really understand.”   
  


“I wouldn’t expect you to.” She feels a hand on her shoulder. “But Liz, I do need you to do something for me.”

 

“What?” She hears herself ask.

 

“That gun of yours. Do you have it on you now?”

 

Liz nods. It's such an automatic gesture it hardly feels as though she's even doing it.

 

She can hear the smile in his voice. “Good.”

 

* * *

 

When Spirit meets them back in the lobby, the smell has only gotten worse.

 

It’s to the point where Kid has given in and pulled the top of his shirt over his nose, and Patty has tied her scarf around her face like a bandanna.

 

She’s currently walking around the lobby, against the walls, and Kid can hear her loud sniffing.

 

“What are you doing?” He asks.

 

“Trying to find the smell,” Patty says, and he can hear her disgust in her voice. “It’s gotta be somewhere, who cares if Justin and Giriko didn’t find anything?”

 

As soon as Spirit walks in, his face immediately contorts in disgust, and he pulls his shirt collar over his nose.

 

“The hell?” Kid hears him grumble before raising his voice. “Did you get a hold of the radio?”

 

“Spirit, all of them were smashed.”

 

Spirit’s eyes widen. “What?”

 

Kid swallows. He’s trying not to panic too much, but the implications of the radios being damaged, especially just before a blizzard that will keep them trapped in the casino, are too much to miss. “All of them. The ones on each floor.”

 

Spirit’s quiet. Far too quiet. 

 

In fact, when Kid meets his gaze, all he can see is silent panic.

 

“What?” Kid asks lowly.

 

“The snowcats are all damaged too.”   
  


Kid’s stomach lurches.  _ “What?” _

 

“The engines were all frozen over. Totally killed most of them Marie and I just barely got one to work.” Spirit’s silent. “It was weird, but we dismissed it as just the cold weather. But…that didn’t feel right, even then. It felt more likely that someone had gotten in and poured water on them-”

Kid swallows. “Spirit, have you seen any of the other workers since lunch?”

 

Spirit blinks, furrowing his brows. “Actually…”

 

This hadn’t occurred to Kid until they’d found the last shattered radio, but he’d realized that in all of the commotion with Stein, no one had noticed that despite it being long past lunch break, none of the workers had been in the lobby where they were supposed to be.

 

“They weren’t in the lobby,” Kid says slowly.

 

Spirit presses his lips together. “I noticed that, but I thought- with what happened to Stein, I really didn’t give much of a second thought-”

 

“Do you think…?”

 

The sudden, loud crack of wood being crushed makes them both jump. When they whip around, Patty has a sledgehammer in hand and is swinging back, and the newly-paneled floor that she’s about to hit is badly cracked.

 

“The hell are you doing?!” Spirit yelps.

 

“I think the smell’s coming through here!” 

 

_ CRACK! _

 

Despite being annoyed by the smell before, Kid resists the urge to slap his palm to his head in frustration. “Patty, the smell is not the issue right now-”

 

Patty ignores him,

 

_ CRACK! _

 

He can hear how the entire floor splinters, giving away and shattering, as though she was cracking an egg.

 

As soon as it breaks, the stench that had already been horrible before suddenly increases, wafting around the room and engulfing it heavily and entirely, to the point where Kid gags, bile rising in his throat, and Spirit actually doubles over and vomits.

 

He hears Patty gag too, and sees how she recoils, stumbling back with eyes and slapping her hands over her nose.

 

_ “No,”  _ She chokes out, scrambling backwards until her back hits the wall. Her face is green, visibly trying not to vomit from the stench.

 

Her eyes are fixed at the hole in the floor.

 

As Spirit chokes, coughs, Kid desperately tries to keep his lunch as he glances over down at the hole, to see exactly what has been making the stench, although the smell of rot, the smell of death is giving him a horrible idea-

 

The face that stares up at him is unrecognizable, pale, decayed. The single noticeable earbud that Kid recognizes at the one that Justin wore while working is the only indication of it’s identity. The eyes are wide open, but covered in a thin veil of rot. The mouth is open wide, and-

 

Kid can’t keep it down anymore and he retches all over the floor.

 

Gasping, wheezing, he stumbles back and wipes his the back of his trembling hand over his mouth. That’s when he notices that Patty and Spirit are staring at the nearby hallway, Patty terrifyingly still and Spirit’s breath coming in short gasps.

 

It’s Justin. Which makes no sense, because that has to be him down in the floor  _ (they’ve been walking all over the floor, how many times have they walked over the floor?) _ . He’s standing next to Giriko, both of whom are giving them the same vacant, empty stare.

 

Without a word they turn and head around the corner.

 

“Wait!” Kid gasps, and ignoring Spirit’s protests, he stumbles, runs, blood pounding in his veins and nausea still trying to overcome in his body.

 

It takes him seconds to make it into the hallway, and Justin and Giriko, with no other nearby doors they could have made it through in that time are gone.


	4. Chapter 4

As soon as they had gotten off the plane, Maka tried in vain to get ahold of her papa, of Miss Marie, or Mr. Stein, of  _ somebody _ . She even called Papa’s boss, but the results were all the same. She knows the reception probably isn’t better than the last time she tried, but  _ goddammit _ she’s still going to try.

 

But calling turned out to be worth it, because Miss Marie actually returned her call, and after speaking to her, has Maka meet her at the hospital.

 

Soon enough, she’s standing over an unconscious Mr. Stein, pale and unmoving in a hospital bed and hooked up to what looks like more than a dozen wires and tubes.

 

“What happened to him?” Maka asks softly.

 

Marie sighs. “The stair railing was unstable due to the reconstruction. I guess he leaned on it a bit too far and fell. I cannot  _ believe-” _   
  


Maka knew that Stein was human. Even he was bound to do something ridiculously dumb on occasion, and as such leaning on a stairwell he that he shouldn’t have been wasn’t that far of a stretch.

 

But at the same time…

 

“Shouldn’t he have known that?” Maka asks impatiently. “He’s done part of the remodeling hasn’t he? Don’t you find that a little suspicious?”   
  


Marie frowns, having heard Maka’s tale and…well, for Maka to describe her as skeptical is an understatement. “Maka, these things happen. Everyone was at lunch when he fell- well, except for Liz. And Kid and Patty.”

 

“Who’s Liz?” Maka asks. “And Patty?”

 

“The caretakers. And they’re about your age, Maka, and about your strength. There’s no way they could’ve pushed him off, and there’s no reason for them to. But…” Her voice trails off.

 

“But _what?”_ Maka presses.

 

“The rest of the snowcats were damaged.”

 

A cold, stab of fear pierces through Maka’s gut. “Damaged? How? Are you telling me they’re up there alone?”

 

“The engines were frozen over…Maka, they have the radio, they’ll be fine.” There’s some unease etched in Marie’s face though, concerns going unvoiced.

 

Maka shakes her head, violently. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

 

None of them expect the movement from the hospital bed next to them. Hell, Marie lets out a gasp when a pale hand shoots up and grasps her wrist.

 

Stein stares up at them, eyes wide, glassy, and horrifyingly intent.

 

“Stein!” Marie’s eye is wide. “Oh my god, let me call a nurse-”

 

“Marie-” He hisses. “Get up to Black Arrow. Now.”

 

Marie stares down at him. “What-”

 

“I was pushed.” Stein’s voice comes out in a strained gasp. “Marie...I was pushed.”

 

The horror in her face is evident. “By who?!”

 

Stein’s expression is borderline wild as he says the name. “Medusa Gorgon.”

 

* * *

 

The first thing Spirit does was get them into the Thompsons’ hotel suite, and locks and bolts the door after them.

 

Kid’s head in spinning, and he’s beginning to wonder if he’s in shock.

 

“Do you think Giriko’s under there too?” Patty’s voice is quiet.

 

“I don’t know,” Kid whispers. “I don’t  _ understand _ , we saw them walking around, they looked like they were alive-”

 

“They’ve been acting weird, though. Maybe they’ve been there the entire time and we just didn’t know.” Silence. “Liz has been acting weird too…”   
  


“Both of you, stop it,” Spirit orders sharply, though he looks just as unnerved as Kid and Patty are. “Right now. Speculating isn’t helping. We need to figure out what is going on, and what we’re going to do-”

 

“Stay in here obviously,” Kid snaps. “We don’t know who killed Justin, hell, it could have been everyone who was in on it for all we know, and there’s no way to find out except the cameras-” He stops.

 

And feels like smacking himself for being such a moron. “Security cameras. That’s how we’ll figure out what we’re dealing with.”

 

“The security cameras.  _ The security cameras, _ you’re right, I’m an  _ idiot-” _ Spirit gets to his feet and takes a deep breath, visibly steeling himself. “Okay. I’m going downstairs.”

 

_ “What?” _ Kid demands. “Alone?”

 

“It’s better for you kids to stay back. In case-” Spirit cuts himself off abruptly. “I’ll check the security feed. Figure out what the hell is going on-”

 

“You can’t go alone!” Kid snaps, his voice high and frantic even to his own ears. “What if- what if whoever killed Justin corners you? What if everyone else is dead? What if-”

 

“Kid,” Spirit’s voice cuts through his panic sharply. “Kid, breathe.”

 

Kid sucks in a breath. He hadn’t even realized his breaths were coming out in ragged gasps.

 

_ Slow, deep breaths. In. Out.  _

 

He sure as hell can’t fall to pieces now. Not at a time like this.

 

“I’m okay,” Kid says. (He imagines himself hardening, bones and skin turning into steel. Resolve. He needs resolve). “I’m okay.”

 

“Alright. Here’s what we’ll do.” Spirit takes a shaking breath. “I go downstairs, check out the cameras, and come back. We’ll go from there. If I’m not back within two hours, assume the worst. Don’t answer the door for anyone but me. Got it?”

 

“This is a bad idea,” Kid says hurriedly. 

 

“I don’t know what other ideas we have,” Spirit says glumly, and Kid knows he’s right. “We’re trapped here with a murderer. We at least need to know who it is, and if we’re the last one’s alive.”

 

“Here.” Patty’s pistol is suddenly in her hand, and she’s holding it out towards Spirit.

 

Spirit stares down at it in shock. “You- is that a gun?”

 

“Uh huh.” She pokes his arm with the butt end of the gun. “Take it. You’ll need it. I wish I had Liz’s too, but-”

 

“Liz has-” Spirit cuts himself off and inhales sharply. “You know what? Good. That’s a good thing. Keep that. You definitely keep that. If anyone tries to come in that isn’t me, use it. Okay?”

 

“But you’re the one going out there,” Patty protests.

 

“I’ll be okay. I’ll- I’ll grab a knife.”

 

“This is a bad idea Spirit,” Kid says, desperately. 

 

“I don’t know what other options we have.” Spirit gets to his feet. He stands tall and composed in front of them, and giving a stern look. His hands are still shaking “No matter what you do, stay here. Block the door with everything you can. Got it?”   
  


Kid and Patty can do nothing but nod wordlessly.

 

Spirit swallows. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

 

When the door shuts and Kid bolts it, all he can feel is dread.

 

* * *

 

Spirit’s starting to wish he’d taken the gun.

 

Especially once he finds Free, Eruka, and the Mizunes.

 

They’re nothing more than limp lumps of people on the floor, at the end of the hallway across from the security office. The floor and nearby walls are completely covered in red.

 

Spirit has to fight not to vomit again as he steps over them. His shoes leave bloody footprints behind him.

 

_ Stay calm. Keep your cool. You have to if you want to see Maka for Christmas, if you want Kid and Patty to be safe, you have to make it, you have to make it- _

 

The first thing he does when he reaches the office is lock the doors.

 

When he turns towards the monitor, he’s surprised by a soft blue glow of the screens, which faintly illuminate the room.

 

_ That’s weird, _ he thinks as his paranoia spikes.  _ I thought I turned that off earlier. _

 

It only spikes further when he sits in front of it, when he realizes all of the screens are displaying the same blue feed.

 

It’s of him. Sitting in front of the monitors, looking confused and frightened and hunched over in terror.

 

And then something shifts in the corner.

 

Spirit whips around his chair, on his feet, and the man steps out from the corner, from the darkness that concealed him.

 

For what feels like a long, horrifying minute, all he can do is stare.

 

“What the hell?” His voice comes out in a crack.

 

No response.

 

“You left,” Spirit manages. “You left, I saw you leave, how- unless you came back?”

 

He gets a long, slow grin in response.

 

Spirit’s heart is hammering in his chest. He recoiled against the desk, back pressed against the corner, as far away from the man as he can get. “How?! I- I would have- the cameras, I would have seen you come in, I would have seen you wandering around the casino-”

 

No response.

 

“Did you kill them?” Spirit whispers.

 

His only response is a long, gleaming butcher’s knife, taken directly from the kitchen, it looks like. The blade, and the hand that holds it, is coated in blood.

 

“Stay back,” Spirit whimpers.

 

Asura’s grin goes wider, and he lunges at him.

 

Spirit grabs the first thing for defense he can--the keyboard, in this case--and swings it. By some miracle, he ends up hit hitting Asura hard in the temple, and he gets a grunt and s tumble in response. Keys explode, scattering everywhere, and Spirit lunges for the door, flicking the lock open and tearing through it as fingers graze at the end of his suit jacket.

 

* * *

 

Kid and Patty sit in silence. 

 

The only sound in the entire room is Patty, unclicking and clicking the safety of the gun, over and over.

 

The constant, never-ending repetition of the sounds doesn’t help the shaking in his hands.

 

_ “There’s no shame in leaving early, you know.” _

 

How much had his father known? 

 

This is the only question blaring in his mind, after everything. All Kid can think about is how wary his father looked that day when Kid had first approached him about going to Black Arrow, the daily calls every night where he’d grill Kid about everything that had been happening. Kid now wishes that he had told him everything, because he knew that his father would have pulled him out of there immediately.

 

What had happened here in the first place to make his father so wary?

 

And why would he even keep Black Arrow running in the first place? If he knows that it’s so skewed, then why the hell would he ever turn it into a resort that hundreds and hundreds of people go to every year?

 

Shouldn’t he know better?   
  


Or maybe he had thought that things had been solved, here. He’d mentioned calling in a priest, so maybe he’d thought that everything had been resolved. That everything was fine, that the taint on this place wouldn’t actually hurt anyone.

 

But he’d still known that the taint was there in the first place. He’d had to. He’d tried to warn Kid, after all.

 

And Kid should have listened.

 

“I’m sorry,” Kid says softly, to the girl sitting next to him on the couch. 

 

“Huh?” Patty blinks over at him.

 

“For dragging you into this. I should have never have gotten you this job, I never should have come here, I never should have been such a whiny brat that day when you two were working so that you never would have gotten fired in the  _ first place _ -”

 

“Shush,” Patty says sharply. 

 

“But I-”

 

_ “Shush,” _ Patty growls. “Don’t be dumb. You didn’t do anything wrong, Kid.” 

 

“But my father knew there was something off about this place!” Kid snaps. “Patty, he knew, and he tried to tell me not to come here in the first place!”

 

“He knew?” Patty’s eyebrows go up. “Then why the hell would he ever keep this place open?”

 

“He must have thought it was fine,” Kid says miserably. “He said nothing weird had happened in years, he even had a fucking priest come in here a few times, but I still should have listened, I should have never have tried to- to tough it out, to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t happening when it was-”

 

“Shush,” Patty says again, vehemently. “You didn’t know.”

 

“But-”

 

_ “You didn’t know,”  _ She repeats firmly. “You had no idea, Kid, this entire thing is crazy, how would you have known any of this would have happened? There’s no way you can blame yourself-”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Kid moans, holding his still-trembling hands in front of him. “It doesn’t matter because it’s only going to get worse. Patty, everything’s going to get worse-”   
  


“You don’t know-”

 

“But I do!” Kid snaps, trying to ignore the burning sting in his eyes. “I had this feeling up ‘til we found Justin, something bad’s going to happen again and I don’t know if I can stop it-”

 

A familiar-sounding knock sounds outside at the door leading into the hallway, cutting him off immediately.

 

“Patty? Are you there?” Liz’s muffled voice called.

 

Kid’s eyes go wide, and for a second, he feels a flush of relief that Liz is alive, before remembering that Justin and Giriko looked alive too. When really, they were rotting under the floorboards.

 

Patty looks like a deer caught in a pair of headlights as she opens her mouth, the closes it abruptly.

 

“Patty?” Liz’s voice calls again. “Are you alright?”

 

“I’m here,” Patty says after a beat. “Are  _ you _ alright?”

 

There’s a pause.

 

“Yes.”

 

There’s so much wrong in that single word. It’s airy and tense and dangerous all at the same time, it lilts just enough to sound slurred and Kid can’t help the apprehension that settles into his bones.

 

“Is Kid with you?”   
  


It’s at that question that Patty springs to her feet and towards a nearby closet, sliding it open silently. 

 

“No,” She calls before sending an intent glare at Kid, mouthing  _ “Get in here, and be quiet.” _

 

Kid’s hesitant to leave her to her own devices, but the intensity in her glare is enough to propel him forward, into the closet and behind the small row of coats as she closes the door behind him-

 

_ BANG! _

 

The gunshot almost makes him yelp in surprise, but he claps his hands over his mouth to stifle it just in time.

 

“Liz, what the hell?” Patty’s cry pierces his ears. He can’t particularly see her, his field of vision is limited, but he can tell when Liz enters the room.

 

“Patty, I need you to help me find Kid.” Her voice carries a command, but it’s distant. Dreamlike. And again, almost slurred. She sounds as though she’s drunk, even. “It’s important.”

 

“Why?” Patty shoots back.

 

“I just- I just do, Patty, you’ll see-”

 

“Not until you tell me why.”

 

“Why are you defending him?” He hears Liz snap. “Why-”

 

“He went with Mr. Albarn,” Patty says, and she sounds so sincere that Kid would easily believe her himself. “When he went to check the security cameras, and Kid went with him.”

 

There’s silence, before he hears muttering. Through the crack in the closet, he can see the two of them, standing face-to-face as though they’re squaring off.

 

“No…he said he’d go after Albarn, who was alone…”

 

“What?”

 

More silence.

 

“Who went after Mr. Albarn?” Patty demands. 

 

Liz doesn’t answer. Not directly anyway- she continues to mutter- low and breathy incoherent ramblings that Kid can’t make heads or tails of.

 

“Liz?” Patty’s voice is becoming high, increasingly panicked. “Liz, what’s wrong with you? You’re not acting like _ you-” _

 

Liz’s eyes suddenly flicker to the side, through the crack in the closet door.

 

Her gaze meets his directly on.

 

Kid’s breath catches in his throat.

 

The closet’s torn open in an instant, despite Patty’s panicked protests, and Kid finds and silver barrel directly against his forehead.

 

But Liz’s finger freezes over the trigger, and it’s not until Kid sees an identical silver barrel pressed to the back of her neck.

 

And for a second, none of them move.

 

Hurt is flooding Liz’s glazed-over eyes. 

 

“You’d shoot me?” She whispers. “Over  _ him?” _

 

She looks even worse up close. When she speaks, it sounds disjointed, almost robotic. It’s a far cry from anything that sounds human, in fact, it almost sounds as though it had been programmed. Her movements are odd too, jerky and puppet-like as though she was being controlled by a network of strings. Her eyes are completely unfocused, despite being filled with what is distinctly anger, and her face, her hair, her features look as though they’ve been bleached, washed out and worn beyond repair.

 

Behind her, Patty’s lip trembles. “Knock it off Liz. Please knock it off.  _ Please.” _

“You don’t need him Patty,” Liz snaps, her words once again catching into a sharp, pointed slur. “He’s just going to fuck you over just like everyone else-”

 

“Please-”

 

“Just like Mom, just like  _ everyone-”  _

 

“Liz, stop, something’s  _ wrong _ with you”

 

_ “Back off, _ Patty-”

 

“Lizzie, stop-”   
  


“Patty, I mean it, listen to me-"

 

“Stop, please,  _ stop-” _

 

“You need to-”

 

“Stop!” Patty wails.

 

And suddenly, Patty sounds like a little girl. 

 

Voice small, eyes wide and brimming with tears.

 

“Don’t do this, Lizzie,” She pleads. “Please, you’re not acting like you, you’re  _ scaring me-” _

 

And suddenly, something flickers. Liz’s eyes suddenly clear, and awareness is beginning to flicker there and the gun lowers a bit down from Kid’s head-

 

But it’s flickering too fast, like a light about to go out-

 

Quick as a flash, Patty lunges and slams the butt of her gun into Liz’s temple.

 

Noiselessly, Liz crumples to the ground.

 

Kid stands, stumble out of the closet, away from Liz’s prone form, blood pounding throughout his body.

 

Patty’s trembling from head to toe, looking utterly distraught, the most he’s ever seen in a person.

 

“I’m sorry Lizzie,” She whispers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-”

 

She cuts herself off, fist clenching around her gun, hovering dangerously over the trigger.

 

There’s a beat of tense, horrible silence.

 

“Mr. Albarn,” Patty says slowly.

 

“What?” Kid’s own voice feels foreign to his ears. 

 

“She said someone’s after Mr. Albarn.”

 

Kid swallows, remembering Liz’s words and realizing she’s right.

 

“We gotta find him.” Patty leans down and plucks her sister’s pistol off of her unconscious form, before handing it to Kid. “We have to, we can’t just leave him-”

 

“I know.” Kid turns the pistol over in his hands, silver metal left slightly warm by Liz’s hands. 

 

He can feel his heartbeat in his ears as their eyes meet.

 

* * *

 

Spirit knows he’s in trouble.

 

Asura’s right behind him, constantly closing in on him even as Spirit tries to evade him through the maze of halls. Adrenaline is pumping in his veins, causing his limbs to feel as though they’re pounding, screaming.

 

By the time he makes it to the stairs going down into the lobby, his lungs are screaming and his mind is desperately wracking itself to figure out a way to evade the madman at his heels, mentally trying to map out routes that he could use to maybe trick him through-

 

He flies down the stairs, he barely makes it down the first flight before he feels an arm catch him at the waist, shoving him hard enough that he loses his balance almost immediately-

 

He falls, tumbling down the stairs and when he hits the ground it’s hard enough that the wind is knocked out of him and his vision goes fuzzy.

 

It’s not long before he recognizes the long, creeping grin hovering above of him.

 

Sharp pain blossoms in his shoulder as the knife blade hits home. The pain spikes slowly, but by the time the knife is drawn back enough to plant itself in his other shoulder, the pain is excruciating, and it takes him a second to realize that the piercing screams of pain are his own.

 

His boss’ son grins down at him, so visibly pleased by his pain that Spirit prays that this is all a dream, that 

 

_ “NO!” _

 

A familiar voice pierces the air and shatters it almost instantaneously.

 

_ Kid. _

 

Kid, standing on top of the stairs, side-by-side with Patty, both of their mouths open in horror.

 

Asura glances upwards, and a slow, almost predatory smile crosses his face.

 

“No,” Spirit croaks.

 

Asura moves quickly, ducking behind the nearby doorway-

 

_ BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG- _

 

A pair of silver glints catch his eye as the two fire round after round at the man. Spirit hears the sound of wood splintering under bullets, the sound of manic, crazed laughter, and then, the dictint click of an empty magazine.

 

He sees Patty clicking over and over in frustration, before Kid grabs her wrist and the two take off, away from the staircase and disappearing back down the hall.

 

He see Asura, descending into mad sprint and descending the stairs after them.

 

_ No. _

 

Asura’s gone, after Kid and Patty, they’re all gone, and he’s lying there bleeding and feeling increasingly too weak to move-

 

_ I’m so sorry, Shinigami. _

 

* * *

 

Miles and miles away, Shinigami wakes up with a gasp, covered in cold sweat.

 

* * *

 

_ Liz feels as though she’s floating. _

 

_ She’s in the middle of a vast, deep sea, floating, hovering. _

 

_ (Patty floats in the forefront of her mind, Patty, looking up at her when she was just a toddler and Liz a little older, Patty, hunched over a sketchpad with an oversize crayon clenched in her little fist, Patty, head resting on her shoulder, Patty, the reason she keeps herself to keep going whenever she feels as though she’s about to break-) _

 

_ (Patty, who she has to keep away from the rest of the scum on this earth-) _

 

**_“Wake up.”_ **

 

_ (Patty, who’d she’d kill for, who’d she’d burn down the whole fucking world for, who she has to wake up and kill that spoiled brat for-) _

 

**_“Liz, you have to wake up-”_ **

 

_ She screws her eyes shut. _

 

**_“You don’t understand, you’re cursed-”_ **

 

_ “Go away,” She hisses. _

 

_ There’s silence. _

 

**_“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do this.”_ **

 

_ She doesn’t feel anything at first. _

 

_ Then there’s a faint, barely-there tugging sensation. A numb feeling on her forearms. _

 

_ Then the numbness begins to burn. _

 

_ (Patty and Kid are walking in the woods, Patty dashing ahead with her tongue stuck in the air towards the falling snowflakes as Kid talks after her-) _

 

_ Even then it doesn’t really hurt. But the burning increases, feeling hotter and hotter until it scorches, it hurts, she’s in  _ **_agony_ ** _ , she’s  _ **_screaming-_ **

 

_ (Patty and Kid silently playing cards, slapping them down, one after another, silent until Kid screw his face up in overly-dramatic shock and Patty  _ **_laughs-_ ** _ ) _

 

**_“Look. Look down, you need to look down-”_ **

 

_ And she does. _

 

_ She hardly comprehends what she’s seeing, at first. _

 

_ Spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs, the face of a queen, all burned into her skin in crimson red, a  _ **_fortune_ ** _ branding her against her will- _

 

_ The small, snakelike smile of a fortuneteller as she watches her writhe in pain, screaming as the fortune burrows into her mind, ensnaring her with thick black roots- _

 

_ (All she can see is Patty, Patty’s wide eyes and bright smile and pleading, desperate cries- _

 

_She doesn’t realize she’s screaming. She’s vaguely aware that someone’s screaming, but the fact that it’s her doesn’t quiet register until later._ _  
_ _  
__She shoves Crona off (Crona Crona, when did she figure out their name), digs her nails into her arms and_ ** _t e a r s-_**

 

_ It hurts. It hurts so damn badly, but there’s nothing she wants more than the cards to be off- _

 

_ When they rip off her skin, it’s the worst pain she’s ever felt in her life. _

 

And she wakes up.

 

She’s curled up on the floor of her and Patty’s room, arms feeling as though they’re practically on fire.

 

(She remembers the fortuneteller’s smile, curved along her lips like a snake-)

 

She’s scrambling to her feet towards the bathroom, turning the cold water as far as it can go and shoving her arms under it, letting out pained whimpers as the water soothes her arms.

 

When she looks up at herself in the mirror, hair disheveled, eyes wide, and tears trailing down her cheeks, it’s the most herself she’s felt in what feels like weeks.

 

_ I’m awake. Just like that, I’m awake- _

 

(All the anger she’s felt throughout her life, all of the terror, the rage, the misery she’d been through had been targeted at one, single person, by his own brother-)

 

_ He makes her laugh, he talks to her like he cares, they get along well together, and I tried to _ **_kill him,_ ** _ they made me try to  _ **_kill him-_ **

 

She stumbles out the bathroom, out the . Her arms are on fire, her cheeks are damp, her breath is coming out in harsh, hiccupping sobs.

 

And as soon as she gets into the hallway, she comes face-to-face with a pale-skinned child.

Their skin is so pale it’s almost gray. Their eyes are dull, faded, even as they pierce through her own. Their hands are ice-cold and clammy.

 

Liz’s scream is a bubble in her throat, ready to burst at any minute.

 

They stare at her, silently. Almost mournfully.

 

“Look out the window.”

 

Without even comprehending what she’s doing, she obeys.

 

It takes her a minute to comprehend what she sees, through the frost-stained windows. Takes her a minute to comprehend the significance of the of the twin lights slowly moving through the veil of snow below.

 

Her mind races. A vehicle. Most likely a snowcat, of some sort.

 

_ Someone’s here for us. _

 

It takes a second to sink in.  _Someone's **here for us.**_

 

“I thought I’d be free when I killed them,” Crona murmurs. “I was wrong. Now I can’t escape, no matter what.”

 

They step forward, grab her hand, and places what feels like a wooden handle into it.

 

Liz shudders, a trembling hiccup forcing it’s way through her lips.

 

“You can though.” They meet her eyes. “I know you can. They’re in the boiler room.”

 

They let go of her hand, and then they’re gone.

 

Liz stares down at the long, rusted-over, obviously old butcher’s knife in the palm of her hand.

 

_“Fuck,”_ She whispers, and bursts into hysterical tears.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t know how long he lies there.

 

He’s faintly aware he’s dying. That part’s hard to avoid, as slow as it is. He’s trying to staunch the bloodflow with his fingers, but his fingers tremble too much and it’s becoming increasingly hard to keep them pressed against his shoulders-

 

He struggles, desperately grasping upward. Scrambling at the edges of unconsciousness, but he’s slipping, an unexplainable heaviness pulling his farther and farther down-”

 

“PAPA!”   
  


A familiar scream is the last thing that pierces through his consciousness.

 

_ Maka? _

 

At that last thought, he loses his grip and plunges down into darkness.

 

* * *

 

Kid’s mind is swept up in a confused haze.

 

There’s one last bullet left in his gun and none left in Patty’s, which is why he grabs Patty’s hand and runs.

 

The fact that Asura has a long, bloodstained knife helps that decision too.

 

_ (Though a part of him screams that they’re leaving Spirit, they’re leaving him to possibly bleed out on the floor, alone, but they need to draw Asura’s attention away from him if they want to survive-) _

 

“Trust me!” He gasps to Patty as they run, and she nods.

 

He’s hyperaware of Asura right behind them  _ (his brother, it’s his brother, he stabbed Spirit and he probably killed Justin and Giriko, he’s been here this entire time, he’s had to have been-) _ , he can hear him breathing heavily but he remains a constant trail, getting closer and closer-

 

They end up in the basement, the boiler room. Kid isn’t particularly thinking of where they’re going, all he knows is that Asura is coming up at their heels, getting closer and closer.

 

They need to be cornered. If he’s going to use this one last bullet, he isn’t wasting it. He already made the mistake of firing shot after shot in the midst of utter, terrified panic.

 

One last bullet.

 

He needs that perfect, precise shot.

 

Their backs are towards the wall. The only sound is the vibrating hum of the boiler, the only light source is the dim, single light bulb.

 

Asura steps around an old, crumpled sofa, until he’s standing directly in front of them.

 

The gun goes up, pointing directly at Asura in trembling hands, and Asura immediately stops. Kid can feel Patty’s hand digging into his arm like a vice, can feel his own hand digging into hers. 

 

And for a second, all they do is watch each other. Kid can feel Asura’s eyes examining him, picking him apart. He can see the way his fingers twitch around the handle of the knife.

 

“Don’t you do it,” Kid says sharply. “I’ll shoot you without hesitation.”

 

“You wouldn’t do it.” Asura’s voice is soft, calm. “And even if you would, your gun is empty. You stupidly emptied it all earlier- I counted the shots, your magazine has to be empty.”

 

“You counted wrong, then. I have one more bullet. Now that I have you in the perfect position, I won’t hesitate to shoot you.”

 

(He doesn’t want to, of course. Brother or not, murderer or not, childhood nightmare or not, he doesn’t know if he can live with the consequences of actually killing, and he’s trying to think of ways he can incapacitate Asura without killing him)

 

He watches as Asura’s eyes narrow, taking in their current position. Kid and Patty are backed into the basement corner, but there’s a direct line of fire that would be an easy, quick shot.

 

“You’d really shoot me?” Asura almost sounds amused at the thought. “You’d really shoot your big brother dead?”

 

“I haven’t considered you a real brother in years. Father made sure of that, and I can’t say I blame him.”   
  


Kid can’t read the flicker of expression is Asura’s eyes. It’s not quite pained, but there’s definite anger there that’s as plain as day. It’s then that he suddenly realizes that Asura’s eyes weren’t like Liz’s had been. They were clear as day, alert as can be. Hyperfocused, directly onto them. “Father treats you much differently than how he treated me, you know. I was just a means to an end with him, someone to uphold his legacy. I bet that’s why he’s so kind to you.”

 

“Is that why you’re doing this?” The question hides a flicker of unease. He’s always known that his father’s relationship with his brother was far from ideal, but the idea that maybe it was a even less ideal than he assumed is…a bit hard to swallow. “Is that why you killed them? Because you did kill them, didn’t you?”

 

A slow, unsettling smile spreads across Asura’s face. “Yes. All of them.”

 

Kid feels as though he’s been hit in the chest with a sack of bricks.

 

All of the workers. Justin, Mifune, Eruka, Free, the Mizunes-

 

“Did you push Stein too?” Kid demands. “And Liz? What did you do to Liz?”

 

“I didn’t push anyone, the fortuneteller took care of that for me. And as for Elizabeth…well, how to you know I did anything?”

 

“Bullshit!” Patty’s voice cuts through sharply, angrily. She’s glaring glowering daggers at Asura, her expression so intense that Kid can’t help but recoil a bit. “She’s like a living zombie! What did you to her?!”

 

“And who’s the fortuneteller?” Kid demands. He raises the pistol a bit higher in the air, pointedly. 

It’s a while before he answers. “You wouldn’t even begin to understand my reasons.”

 

Does he really want to, though? “Try me.” 

 

“You felt it didn’t you? When you first came here?”

 

Kid nods. 

 

“Father could feel it too. Did you know that? That’s why he bought Black Arrow in the first place. He came to this place, saw its potential, and tried to strip it out of everything it was. He fixed it up and turned it beautiful and allows thousands and thousands, of people to come here. He’s been trying to erase it’s history from the start.”

 

“And why wouldn’t he?” Kid snaps. “People have died here. Although I can’t imagine that  might be a problem for you.”

 

Asura ignores him. “The fortuneteller…where to start? I suppose you’d know her better by the name of Medusa Gorgon.”

 

Kid feels a cold chill go up his spine.

 

“Medusa Gorgon?” Patty asks slowly.

 

Right. She doesn’t know all the details.

 

“The name of the woman who died here,” He tells her softly. “She owned and created Black Arrow.”   
  


Patty’s silent at that.

 

“The first time I met her I was seven years old,” Asura murmurs. “I remember being terrified, but she took me aside to meet her sisters, showed me around the expanse of Black Arrow. Whispered to me about its secrets. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with it, here. It’s…safe here. Father tried so hard to cover up it’s scars, but to me, those scars always made it more beautiful.” 

 

Kid hears Patty inhale sharply the second Asura mentions scars.

 

“I’ve been coming here ever since, even after Father kicked me out. There was no way I could just  _ leave _ , even after someone tried to kick me out.” 

 

His eyes meet Kid’s sharply, and Kid has to resist the urge to shiver.

 

“She talks to me. Her and her two sisters. Arachne, especially. They’ve talked to me since I was a child, even when I wasn’t at Black Arrow.  Lady Medusa gave me a fortune that I know will hurt father in that exact way, and so far it’s been coming true  _ perfectly. _ It was around that time when I saw father’s hypocrisy for what it was- the futility of covering up scars, of ignoring your own. Concealing them by attempting to assuage your guilt. Like buying damaged property, and ignoring how damaged it is until it bites you where it hurts the most. Like treating your youngest better than you ever treated your oldest.”

 

_ (The one and only time he remembers his father drinking was when he was young and his arm was in a cast, he’d walked in on his father holding his head in his hands with an empty bottle of scotch and shot glass right next to him) _

 

_ (There’s only one trace of Asura he remembers finding- a small pair of shiny black baby shoes, too old and scuffed to be his, stored deep in his father’s belongings, and when they disappeared soon after Kid wasn’t sure if they’d been thrown away or stashed to an even deeper hiding place-) _

 

Kid feels sick.

 

There’s a lot he wants to say to Asura. Much of it is in defense of his father, who always admits to his own mistakes, to Kid, to his associates, to everyone. Maybe he’d changed, but what was the problem in changing? What was the issue in trying to become better?

 

What was the issue in trying to avoid repeating the mistakes you made with your older son with your youngest? Asura was implying favoritism, but all Kid can see is regret and 

 

_ (The photo of Black Arrow on the Achievement Wall depicts his father smiling wide and proud, eyes glittering and hopeful. Maybe he hadn’t known of it’s darkness yet, but what else could he do when he found out other than try to cleanse the place and free it from the horrors it had seen?) _

 

““Your sister,” Asura nods at Patty. “Understands. She sees the futility of hiding scars, on some level at least. She’s angry because of it, you know. So, so angry. Which made her an ideal, but we…well, we had to brand her, for one thing.”

 

The murderous rage in Patty’s face is instantaneous, and it’s all Kid can to to grab her by the back of her collar as she lunges at him, while still maintaining his aim at Asura.

 

“It wasn’t difficult to keep her under control, however,” He goes on. “All we have to do is dangle you in front of her, and she’ll do anything we ask.”

 

“I’m going to kill you.” Patty’s voice comes out into a snarl. “You sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick fucking  _ bastard-”  _

 

“It’s ironic, if you think about it,” Asura goes on. “Attachments are always a risk. You think she’d know that, too.”

 

Kid swallows, because for a second, those words trigger an image of what could have been. He sees his brother existing within his life instead of disappearing without a trace, a dinner table having three sets of dishes instead of two. Another face on his father’s wall.

 

But that second is brief, and is gone like as quickly as a candle being snuffed out.

 

And instead, Asura steps forward. “Go ahead, little brother. Shoot me.”

 

Kid grits his teeth. The gun trembles even harder in his hand. “I’ll do it.”

 

“Then do it.” Another step.

 

“Stay back,” Kid snaps, but his voice cracks and wavers. 

 

“Kill me. Blow my brains out, splatter them all over the floors and walls.” Asura takes another step forward, the wide grin only growing longer.   
  


“I said stay back-”

 

“Do it.” Patty’s voice is low. 

 

Another step. “Or maybe I’ll take yours and splatter them around instead-”

 

Asura’s eyes remain on him. He doesn’t give any sign of noticing the stairs to the entrance creak.

 

“Asura-”

 

“Do you think father would cry?” Asura’s eyes flicker over to Patty. “Do you think your  _ sissy _ would?”

 

Another step, a bit more crouched this time, and Kid knows by the gleam in his eyes that he’s about to lunge.

 

Two things happen at once.

 

The gun goes off.

 

Then, a familiar blonde blur emerges from behind the stairwell with an angry shriek. 

 

There’s a burst of blood. A knife being driven in home. A bullet catching it’s target in the chest.

 

Asura shrieks. Stumbles. Trips back over the couch, eyes wide and horrified at the knife blade sticking out of his neck, the bullet wound in his chest.

 

Kid stares, feeling completely immobilized, as his brother collapses onto the ground with a thud and a series of pained whimpers.

 

He meets Liz’s eyes. She’s standing fists clenched and breathing heavily.

 

But there’s a spark in there that Kid hasn’t seen in her for what feels like a long time.

 

* * *

 

Liz regards the man in front of her, bleeding out at her feet, knife handle sticking out of his neck, bullet hole right under his sternum. Regards him as he rolls over on his back, arms outstretched in the air, choking,  _ dying _ , as his eyes focus on her, angry and terrified all at the same time.

 

“You-” He hisses.

 

“Did she brand you too?” Liz asks, her voice wobbling in her throat.

 

There’s hatred in his eyes now, pure, unadulterated hatred. “Y-y-you- you think I’d need a brand? Tha- that I’m weak like you?”

 

“Weak because I wouldn’t have tried to kill your brother if I wasn’t?!” Liz snarls, anger coursing through her bloodstream (because her sister is her life, how could this man ever reject his brother-). 

 

He hisses and Liz knows the truth.

 

He hadn’t been scarred like her.

 

Utter revulsion fills her insides. This bastard had murdered at least ten people. And all that had been him- he hadn’t been fucking  _ brainwashed _ like her.

 

She turns his back on him, taking a step towards the kids in front of her. She can’t meet their gaze. Even though she can feel theirs on her.

 

“I’m sorry,” Her voice cracks, quivering in her throat. “I’m sorry, Patty, I’m so sorry-”   
  


* * *

 

Her entire demeanor has changed.

 

Liz is standing tall over Asura’s crumpled form, but her shoulders are hunched, her mouth is downturned, she’s all angles and edges of sheer emotion, of sorrow, guilt, terror-

 

“You’re okay?” Patty’s voice is just as shaky, but her question says it all.

 

Liz nods shakily. 

 

Patty lunges forward, wraps her in a hug, and Liz lets out a sob. Kid can see the way her arms tighten around Patty, holding her close and fast like a lifeline. It briefly occurs to him that this might all be a ruse…but he stomps that out almost immediately. 

 

Liz had looked so drained before, almost as if she was operating on some sort of autopilot. Like she’d been stripped, down to her bones, her basic components.

 

Now she looks in control. She looks like she’s functioning again. Like she’s  _ human _ again.

 

Despite everything, all Kid can feel is relieved.

 

_ (They didn’t take her. At least they didn’t take her- ) _

 

As soon as she lets go of Patty, she stalks over the boiler. Grabs the lever. Kid knows what she’s about to do even when she pauses, breath shaking.

 

Kid gets to his feet. Stalks over next to her, grabs the lever, and turns it as hard as he can, around and around. The boiler rumbles with a pitch that gets higher and higher until it sounds as though it’s screaming for mercy. 

 

Liz stares at him when he meets her eyes.

 

“There’s a snowcat waiting for us.” Her voice trembles.

 

“A snowcat?” Kid blinks. “How-”

 

“I don’t know. But I saw it outside. Someone’s _here,_ we’re going to be safe.”

 

That takes a second to sink in.

 

Someone's here. Someone came for them.

 

They can **_leave-_**

 

“Then we need to go,” Patty cuts in. “This place is gonna blow-”

 

Kid reaches over and grabs Liz’s hand. Liz stiffens, briefly, and her eyes go wide in surprise. Kid meets her gaze head-on and tries to tell it all in his gaze. (It wasn’t your fault, I know it wasn’t your fault, you won in the end, you’re okay, we’ll be _ okay-).  _

 

He hears Asura let out a choked, almost gurgling whimper.

 

“Then let’s go,” Kid says, firmly.

 

And Liz nods.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The blood’s  **_RED_ ** under his fingers.

 

They run out of the room, but he can’t move, no matter how hard he’s tried.

 

One hand reaches out at the empty doorway, as the boiler screams. He knows, he knows they’re long gone by now, but maybe, just maybe, he can catch them-

 

“It’s gonna explode.” The child says softly. Their face is hovering above him, doe eyes and messy hair as always. “Black Arrow is going to go up in flames any second now.”

 

**_No._ **

 

“You lost.” They look satisfied. “I’m going to be _free.”_

 

**_(Have to find them, have to kill them, have to find Kid-)_ **

 

His fingers dig into the floorboards. He could pull himself forward-

 

_ And then he’s a child again, watching his father from a distance, his tall, proud, strong father who makes him feel so small, and as he grows and bitterness begins to fester all he wants to do his to make his father hurt- _

 

_ (like a plea for attention, a cry of “look at me!”) _

 

_ He’s eighteen years old and he’s watching this small child, this infant, who takes up Father’s attention like a miniature vacuum, who he loves more than he ever loved Asura. _

 

_ When he hurts him, when he makes little Kid screams, he takes pleasure out of hurting the  _ **_thing_ ** _ his father loved so much, and he knew that if he went and killed him it would hurt his father even worse- _

 

_ And now Kid is running towards the snowcat. Alive. Unharmed. Liz and her sister follow him. The girl with pigtails helps pull them through the doors, slamming them closed behind them. _

 

_ The vehicle drives away. _

 

_ Unharmed. Unscratched. Uninterrupted. _

 

_ It’s the last thing he sees before his world bursts into flames. _

  
  
  


**_._ **

 

**_._ **

 

**_._ **

  
  


**_Afterwards:_ **

 

The hospital is warm.

 

Liz’s underarms are soaked, slathered with antibacterial cream, and lathered with bandages. Afterwards, she watches as Kid’s knuckles are stitched up, as Spirit’s daughter, (Liz has been offered explanations for her out-of-nowhere presence, but it all has to do with the creepy shit she wants to distance herself as far away from as she can) _ , _ stares at her shoes and rests her head on Marie’s shoulder while they wait for news about her father in intensive care.

 

Kid’s father, who looks like a tall, middle-aged version of Kid himself, sweeps in through the waiting room doors, takes one look at Kid, and runs to wrap him in an embrace. Kid is crying, but he’s visibly trying to pretend that he isn’t.

 

Nobody explains what happens. When Kid’s dad comes up to her, she almost expects him to ask what happened. Instead, he just holds out his hand. She shakes it, and then he goes to Patty, who does the same thing.

 

The doctor comes in, and tells them that Spirit’s going to live, and that’s when his daughter breaks down sobbing. Marie holds her tight, and Liz lets out an exhale _ (because  _ **_they_ ** _ couldn’t take away at least  _ **_one_ ** _ of them, at least the guy who she knew genuinely tried to keep her and Kid and Patty safe will live, even if almost everybody else’s corpses are now burning in the remains of Black Arrow). _

 

It’s almost dawn. Marie and Kid’s dad are talking to the police. Spirit’s daughter is talking to one of the nurses. Patty is passed out against her shoulder.

 

Liz and Kid sit in silence.

 

_ I tried to kill him.  _

 

It’s one thing to steal from him. To knick a few items under his nose to sell later. To make dumb jokes at his expense.

 

But she’s never going to forgive herself for trying to kill him, when the only thing he ever did was try to make Patty laugh.

 

And get them a job. And give them a taste of luxury they’d only ever dreamed of just months ago.

 

The fact that he doesn’t even seem to blame her makes it feel so much worse.

 

“I’m sorry.” It has to be the millionth time she’s said it, but she can’t help it. 

 

“You’ve said that before.” Sure enough, Kid’s noticed. “It wasn’t your fault. Anyone could tell that you weren’t yourself. They had to curse you in order to get you to try to kill me. ”

 

“I still tried though. And I would have killed you.” That’s by the worst part. If Patty hadn’t been there, if she hadn’t placed herself as a buffer between the two of them, Liz’d be a murderer right at this moment.

 

“It’s fine,” Kid says, quietly. “If anything, it’s my fault for taking you and Patty up there. It’s my fault this ever happened.”

 

“That’s not true.”   
  


There’s another long, heavy stretch of silence.

 

“Should we have left the casino to burn down like that?” Kid asks, quietly.

 

She gives him an incredulous look. “Are you joking? If you hadn’t hit the boiler, I would have hiked back up there, blizzard and all, to burn the place down myself.”

 

It takes him a minute to respond. “You’re right. It’s just…Black Arrow was my father’s most prized property. A large part of my inheritance. I’d dreamed of going there since I was a child. I don’t really regret…setting it on fire, but- I just feel like I failed, somehow. There’s a million things I could have done to prevent any of this from happening-”

 

“And I’m in the same boat,” Liz says, sharply. “Medusa got into my head and screwed me over. I hardly remember the weeks leading up to tonight after I first saw her. But I keep thinking about how I could have possibly fought back, but- but it doesn’t do any good, does it? None of us had a clue what was happening. We just have to go from here. What’s done is done.”

 

“I shot my brother,” Kid says, quietly. 

 

She can see his hands shift under the pockets of his jacket, to where she knows her empty gun is being stored, and a lump in her throat forms.

 

“Are you okay?” She asks, softly.

 

“I’m not sure, honestly,” Kid admits. “After everything he’s done, it should be easy to dismiss him. But…” 

 

He looks so genuinely sad that Liz can actually feel her heart break for him a little.

 

So she crosses the distance, reaches over to the chair next to her and clasps her hand around his.

 

“We’ll be okay,” Liz murmurs.  _ We’ll never go anywhere terrifying again,  _ she almost says, but it seems better to just leave it at that.

 

For the second time that night, her fingers string through his.

 

It doesn’t take long for him to squeeze her hand back.

 

* * *

 

_ The ballroom is worn, faded now.  _

 

_ He can smell the smoke, the flames burning outside. The red wallpaper is torn, faded to a pale husk, the chandelier is a wrecked mess on the floor.  _

 

_ The party is over. There’s no laughter, only the sound of a building being consumed. No one is singing. No one is dancing. In fact, there is hardly anyone there at all. _

 

_ Except for a select few. _

 

_ The pale-haired woman is curled up against the tall, scruffy, muscular man, who also has the five pink-haired sisters huddled in a cluster. They look faded, ragged, worn- the woman’s frog sweater is in tatters, the man’s shirt is in rags, and the look in their eyes is flat, dulled by terror. The man and the woman, their hands are linked tightly. _

 

_ The long-haired man that Asura had impaled with his own sword sits alone in the corner, eyes downcast and expression unreadable. The man with the leather jacket and the man with the earphones (that Asura had buried in the floorboards) both glare at the floor. _

 

_ The only one who looks remotely happy is the slight, doe-eyed child, who stands with a small smile. _

 

_ “We’ll be free, soon,” They murmur. _

 

_ “Thank god,” The woman in the frog sweater whimpers. _

 

_ Asura watches as the walls of the ballroom he’d first seen as a child begin to crumble to ashes as the fire draws closer and closer, and a overwhelming, desperate burst of  _ something _ is in his throat, but he can’t tell if it’s a sob or a scream of rage. _


End file.
